Playing Tennis
Tennis is my greatest passion. I have dedicated the last year and a half of my life to becoming a better player in hopes of playing at a prestigious college. I didn't start playing tennis in hopes of playing in college or even being good; I just wanted a gym credit. After a disappointing 7th grade basketball season, I was ready to try something new. That was a little over three years ago. Now I’m trying to decide which schools I like the most and can play tennis for.
I began playing tennis in the 8th grade. I'd play multiple sports my entire life until then and had been fairly successful at most of them. Being a beginner at a sport was not something I had experienced in a while. Tennis started as an accident for me. My friend’s …show more content…
I was ranked 11th out of the 12 on the team. The friend who had gotten me to play in the first place was ranked 5th of 12 on the team after he took tennis lessons weekly in the summer. This, of course, made me feel awful. After the season was over, I was lucky to have a mom that would drive me to Vienna three to four times a week to train at Greenmont Racquet Club. I've been training there for about six hours per week ever since. My sophomore season, the first season after I began training, I saw huge improvement in my game. I was ranked 3rd of 13 and playing varsity singles, my friend was still one spot on the line up ahead of me but I was catching up. I had an okay season, winning nearly half of my matches. Looking back, I wasn't a smart tennis player. The following summer was when I really committed myself to …show more content…
I began training on my own as well as training at Greenmont Racquet Club. I started playing in USTA tournaments which are usually in bigger cities with greater competition. The goal of these tournaments is to get experience playing higher level competition and to earn a ranking. After a great summer of training and tournaments, I was excited for high school tennis. My friend, who had also been training consistently, was at a similar skill level to me and we alternated for first and second singles. After a great season in which the team finished 15-4, and the team took second place in the ECOL. I finished the season 14-5 and was named first team all ECOL, I was addicted. I was starting to realize playing in college was an option after looking at YouTube recruiting videos of players appearing to be worse than me, getting scholarships to play at Division 2 schools. I made a recruiting video and emailed eight coaches of the schools I was interested in and I only heard back from six of the eight coaches. Out of the remaining six, three coaches were ready to offer me a spot as a walk-on because they had had used all of their scholarships on other recruits. That left me with three schools, all of which I liked and could earn scholarship money for playing
Tennis is my greatest passion. I have dedicated the last year and a half of my life to becoming a better player in hopes of playing at a prestigious college. I didn't start playing tennis in hopes of playing in college or even being good; I just wanted a gym credit. After a disappointing 7th grade basketball season, I was ready to try something new. That was a little over three years ago. Now I’m trying to decide which schools I like the most and can play tennis for.
I began playing tennis in the 8th grade. I'd play multiple sports my entire life until then and had been fairly successful at most of them. Being a beginner at a sport was not something I had experienced in a while. Tennis started as an accident for me. My friend’s …show more content…
I was ranked 11th out of the 12 on the team. The friend who had gotten me to play in the first place was ranked 5th of 12 on the team after he took tennis lessons weekly in the summer. This, of course, made me feel awful. After the season was over, I was lucky to have a mom that would drive me to Vienna three to four times a week to train at Greenmont Racquet Club. I've been training there for about six hours per week ever since. My sophomore season, the first season after I began training, I saw huge improvement in my game. I was ranked 3rd of 13 and playing varsity singles, my friend was still one spot on the line up ahead of me but I was catching up. I had an okay season, winning nearly half of my matches. Looking back, I wasn't a smart tennis player. The following summer was when I really committed myself to …show more content…
I began training on my own as well as training at Greenmont Racquet Club. I started playing in USTA tournaments which are usually in bigger cities with greater competition. The goal of these tournaments is to get experience playing higher level competition and to earn a ranking. After a great summer of training and tournaments, I was excited for high school tennis. My friend, who had also been training consistently, was at a similar skill level to me and we alternated for first and second singles. After a great season in which the team finished 15-4, and the team took second place in the ECOL. I finished the season 14-5 and was named first team all ECOL, I was addicted. I was starting to realize playing in college was an option after looking at YouTube recruiting videos of players appearing to be worse than me, getting scholarships to play at Division 2 schools. I made a recruiting video and emailed eight coaches of the schools I was interested in and I only heard back from six of the eight coaches. Out of the remaining six, three coaches were ready to offer me a spot as a walk-on because they had had used all of their scholarships on other recruits. That left me with three schools, all of which I liked and could earn scholarship money for playing