Tennis

The sport of tennis has had a huge impact on my life.

More than just helping me with hand eye coordination and athleticism it also taught me more important things. It showed me the values of friendship, perseverance, and enjoying the little things in life. Tennis at Webster City never was a very popular sport, we barely had enough members for a junior varsity. But I almost liked this better because everyone on the team got to be really good friends with each other. Everyone had a great time during the season even though we lost a few people due to bad grades and other problems.

One of the greatest memories I have of the season is the tennis banquet. It was at our coach’s house since our team was so small. While at his house we wrestled, played pool, and drank a ton of mountain dew, and at the end I got my first varsity tennis letter. Friendship was a great part of tennis, now I understand even more how important it is. Perseverance started when I was little when my mom signed me up for tennis lessons. I had a pretty difficult teacher, when I missed a serve or did something stupid I would have to do push ups on the super-heated cement and try again.

I hated tennis back then but I didn’t really want to give up so I kept at it and kept pushing. Now I’m glad I stuck it out, it really helped me in the long run. I remember my first day of freshman tennis practice I was easily the most experienced freshman on the team. This taught me how important it is to persevere and never give up. Enjoying the little things and humility is probably the biggest lesson I learned through tennis. This was a lesson that was drilled into us during the season because overall our team won one meet during the entire season.

So needless to say we never had very much fun during the matches. We learned to appreciate all of our lucky shots and good hits. And after practices we would all go to someones house and play video games there until it was time to go home. We learned to look beyond all the bad things and have fun. But by far the most fun we ever had was after meets, most of the time we would go out of our way to find a pizza ranch and eat everything there. I remember one time the staff brought out a fresh pan of breadsticks, our whole team surrounded it and I saw a little old lady get up.

After a few seconds the woman turned around empty handed seeing our team had taken every last one. So even if you don’t succeed at what you’re doing you can still find fun in other, smaller, things Webster City’s tennis program was probably the greatest thing all year and its defiantly the most fun I’ve ever had there. It taught me three important values that would make my life all the better.