I have never been the most coordinated individual. Actually, I have been clumsy almost my entire life. It seemed as though I would never find a sport that I loved and could also play well. My freshman year at Everett high school I heard about the girl’s tennis team. I had never held a tennis racket in my life, let alone hit a tennis ball. Regardless of this fact, I decided to go to the information meeting in the hopes of maybe joining the team. After attending the meeting I went home and asked my parents if we could go buy a racket and tennis balls that same night. I’m sure in their minds the thought of me playing a sport was a funny concept. I knew I was starting off behind, being that I was clumsy, slow and I had never played before. That fact did not stop me from wanting to play the sport.

I cannot say that tennis came easy to me in the beginning. I was out of shape, uncoordinated, and very slow at first. When I first started playing, I honestly couldn’t even hit the ball, it would either fly past me or even worse, hit me. I also struggled with conditioning in the beginning. The team would run laps around the school and at first I was convinced I was going to die from not being able to breathe.

As the weeks progressed I found myself running a little faster during practice. I was able to level my breathing which allowed me to run for a lot longer than when I first joined the team.

When we formed teams in the following weeks I was placed on the lowest doubles position on junior varsity. Honestly, I was just happy to have the opportunity to play on the team. I knew it was going to take a lot of practice outside of the normal school practices to be the player I wanted to be. I slowly became proud of the player I had become towards the end of the season. Now I’m not saying I was the best player on the team by any means, but I knew how far I had come since joining the team only months prior to that moment. At the end of the season I received the most improved player award and I couldn’t express how excited I was that all of my hard work had paid off.

As I progressed through my tennis career I was able to move through the rankings and eventually play on varsity. Although I started out playing doubles, I became a strong enough player to play singles. I practiced long and hard to become the independent, swift and caring player that I am today.

Tennis sincerely taught me a life lesson. It taught me that even if you are the worst player on your team, or the worst at your job, whatever it may be, fight every day to be better than you were yesterday. As long as you are always trying to be better than you were yesterday, you have truly achieved something of value. Tennis taught me to believe in myself when the odds are against me.

There are a lot of challenges we will face in life that seem overwhelming. The best thing to do is to keep trying and to believe in yourself. If you just do those two things, you’ve already won most of the battle.

Don’t give up on yourself.