This first post will be about 2 of the many different ways that tennis has helped and influenced me and my life decisions. Tennis is something that I have always been passionate about, and it’s something I can see myself remaining interested in for the rest of my life.

I began playing tennis at a young age, around 6 or 7, as my Mom was a huge fan of the sport back then. I remember watching professional matches on TV with her, not really understanding what was going on but enjoying it nonetheless. No matter how old or young you are, watching tennis for the first time is usually confusing because of the unique scoring system. If you’re curious, see How to Keep Score in Tennis

I began taking the game of tennis seriously when I was in middle school. My Mom and I searched for coaches who could give me lessons, and we sort of bounced around to different places until we found Jeff. By pure coincidence we found that Jeff was actually a relative of ours in a distant way(I believe he’s my great uncle). This led to me getting many lessons from him and forming a great relationship that I still have to this day. This relationship is the first way tennis has helped me in my life.

Jeff also happened to be the coach of my high school’s tennis team, and since I began lessons with him in middle school, I was able to practice with the high school team a few times while I was in 8th grade. It was incredibly useful to practice with high school aged kids before being one myself. The pace was much faster, the players much stronger, and there was much less hand holding when playing a match. Because of Jeff, I got to experience these things early.

My high school had never been known as a great tennis school. Many students didn’t even know we had a team. So after freshman year and all of the seniors on the team graduated, our numbers were looking rather thin. So, I took it upon myself to do some recruiting to ensure that the team would remain viable. I recruited a couple friends, and together we were able to gather enough people to keep the team alive. This is something I was incredibly proud of, as tennis was not the most popular thing to play in school, and it felt good to be openly supporting it, even though it wasn’t well known and most kids were interested in other sports. This is the second way thing tennis helped me understand; don’t be ashamed of who you are and what you like.

These are the first 2 ways that Tennis blessed me with. My relationship with Jeff, and the confidence to be myself. In my next post I will share the remaining 2 ways, as well as expand on how these first 2 helped me later in my life.

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