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“I did not get bored with repetition. Every time a ball went in the pocket I felt satisfaction. When I missed I simply ignored the fact, reset the shot and tried again.” Frank Conroy, “Running the Table” pg. 29
I've played tennis ever since I could remember, but somehow, at eighteen, I still wasn't very good at it. You'd think that ten years of summer leagues and many close cousins who'd been the stars of their teams would have rubbed off on me, but you'd be wrong. I mean, I wasn't completely hopeless. I was pretty fast, and I could strike fast throws back five or six times out of ten, but I wasn't about to be scouted for championship teams.
My team that summer, the Aces, wasn't anything special, either. We had two or three pretty talented players, but most, like me, were just barely what you could call decent. But somehow we'd almost scraped through the first round of playoffs, with only one game standing between us and semifinals. Predictably, the game had come down to the last match, and it was my turn to play. It was like one of those moments you see in movies. The scrawny girl who no one really believed in makes a few miraculous strikes, winning the big game for her team and becoming a local legend. Except my life wasn't a movie, and any hopes my teammates or coach might've had for a last-minute chance to victory were crushed with my missed hits and points lost.
I was inconsolably angry with myself. I spent the entire car ride home tuning out my parents' words of consolation, replaying my match over and over in my head. For the next few days I was miserable thinking about how, if it hadn't been for me, the Aces might have been on their way to a league victory, and nothing anyone said could convince me that the loss wasn't on my shoulders.
About a week later, some of my friends from the team got together at the park to hang out. When I arrived, I was a little surprised that no one seemed to be mad at me. After all, I'd lost us the game, and they had to be disappointed about not making it to the semifinals. It wasn't until we split into teams for an impromptu pickup game that I started to realize why no one was upset. Maybe it was the excitement of reaching the playoffs or the pressure of living up to my cousins' examples, but sometime during that game, I'd lost sight of why most of us played tennis. It wasn't to win the championship, as cool as that would have been. It was because we all loved to play.
Conroy seemed to realize that and cared more for playing the game than actually winning it. He didn’t mind missing a shot and racked up hours and hours of practices to get better. Like Conroy, I didn't need a trophy or a Hollywood come-from-behind win to have fun playing tennis with my friends, but maybe I needed to lose first to remember that.
“I did not get bored with repetition. Every time a ball went in the pocket I felt satisfaction. When I missed I simply ignored the fact, reset the shot and tried again.” Frank Conroy, “Running the Table” pg. 29
I've played tennis ever since I could remember, but somehow, at eighteen, I still wasn't very good at it. You'd think that ten years of summer leagues and many close cousins who'd been the stars of their teams would have rubbed off on me, but you'd be wrong. I mean, I wasn't completely hopeless. I was pretty fast, and I could strike fast throws back five or six times out of ten, but I wasn't about to be scouted for championship teams.
My team that summer, the Aces, wasn't anything special, either. We had two or three pretty talented players, but most, like me, were just barely what you could call decent. But somehow we'd almost scraped through the first round of playoffs, with only one game standing between us and semifinals. Predictably, the game had come down to the last match, and it was my turn to play. It was like one of those moments you see in movies. The scrawny girl who no one really believed in makes a few miraculous strikes, winning the big game for her team and becoming a local legend. Except my life wasn't a movie, and any hopes my teammates or coach might've had for a last-minute chance to victory were crushed with my missed hits and points lost.
I was inconsolably angry with myself. I spent the entire car ride home tuning out my parents' words of consolation, replaying my match over and over in my head. For the next few days I was miserable thinking about how, if it hadn't been for me, the Aces might have been on their way to a league victory, and nothing anyone said could convince me that the loss wasn't on my shoulders.
About a week later, some of my friends from the team got together at the park to hang out. When I arrived, I was a little surprised that no one seemed to be mad at me. After all, I'd lost us the game, and they had to be disappointed about not making it to the semifinals. It wasn't until we split into teams for an impromptu pickup game that I started to realize why no one was upset. Maybe it was the excitement of reaching the playoffs or the pressure of living up to my cousins' examples, but sometime during that game, I'd lost sight of why most of us played tennis. It wasn't to win the championship, as cool as that would have been. It was because we all loved to play.
Conroy seemed to realize that and cared more for playing the game than actually winning it. He didn’t mind missing a shot and racked up hours and hours of practices to get better. Like Conroy, I didn't need a trophy or a Hollywood come-from-behind win to have fun playing tennis with my friends, but maybe I needed to lose first to remember that.
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