Jon Zulaica hails from the European jai alai aristocracy.
Born in the cradle of the four-centuries-old sport in the coastal Basque town of San Sebastian, he first picked up a cesta — the wicker basket used to hurl the ball at tremendous speeds — at the age of 7, prompting his father Juan Inazio to enroll him at the famous San Sebastian Jai Alai School. Juan Inazio Zulaica and Jesus Zulaica, Jon’s uncle, played professional jai alai for decades, both in Europe and during the sport’s heyday in Florida and Connecticut in the 1980s.
Jesus Zulaica, tweaking the spelling of his surname, played under the name “Zulaika.”
