A new roster addition is coming to Magic City Jai-Alai in September. Lander Aramendi has joined the Magic City roster and will make his professional debut on Saturday, September 11 in the early games. He will be playing under his first name of “Lander.”
The name Aramendi is not new to Jai-Alai. Lander is a 25-yo second generation Jai-Alai player. His father played under the name Aramendi at Palm Beach Jai-Alai and quite likely played significant time in Newport too. This author has seen Aramendi on the Palm Beach court hundreds of times and remembers he was an excellent player. The complete bio on Aramendi at Palm Beach is not known at this time, but we suspect it won’t take renowned Jai-Alai historian, Ralph Butts (aka “Tiger” of website tigerhili.com), long to track down the full history and release more details on his website. We also expect Jeff Conway of pelotapress.com to dig up additional info with photos from his substantial list if industry contacts.
While the name Aramendi is well known and respected in the Jai-Alai community, the young Lander is relatively new to playing the game of Jai-Alai and has less than 1-year of amateur experience. Lander has been practicing at Matt’s court in Connecticut and was flown down to Magic City for some court time last week. Here are Stu Neiman’s observations in his own words. “Lander catches and throws well and has a rebote, however, he needs some work on shots and serving,” according to Stu.
The 2nd annual USNJAC tourney runs from August 27-29 this year. Magic City Jai-Alai will be running their regular schedule through Monday, August 23rd prior to the tourney, however, they will be closed on Tuesday, August 24th in prep for the upcoming tourney. Magic City will have a short break after the conclusion of the USNJAC tourney on Sunday, August 29th and will continue with pari-mutuel games on Saturday, September 11th where Lander will make his professional Jai-Alai debut.
SayHiLi.com wishes Lander a great debut and mucho Golden Cesta Awards! Welcome to Magic City Jai-Alai, home of exciting, fast-paced professional short-court Jai-Alai!
Steve