I stood confident, energetic, and calm before my second opponent of junior year tennis; but my attitude changed in a matter seconds. His serve flashed before me like lightning during a storm, there was no time to react. His forehands constanly battered at my backhand side as well as my will. Everything I tried, cross court forhands, down the line shots, and short backhands just would not break his rhythm of play. Eventually I lost the match, along with my motivation to play. Just from the look of my face my team knew I felt demoralized. They offered words of encouragement and support, but it wasn't enough to cleanse me of the feeling of defeat. My feelings finally vanished when another member of the team offered to train me. This brought on feelings of motivation and elation, because this …show more content…
person was much better than I and represented our school at district tournaments. Training started that week everyday after regular practiced ended. We worked on serves, return of serves, and volleys. At first I saw no improvement nothing seemed to work, nothing clicked. Then a week later I saw little changes that transformed in leaps of improvment resulting in a more consistent first serve, better net play, and faster reaction times. It was now time to implement what I learned in a real match. The game started off great with me winning the first set, my hits were consistent and so were my serves.
Then suddenly he made started to make a comeback. His shots were more penetrating and consistent and I started to make mistakes, mistakes that costed me points on board. I stayed calm and told myself I have to change something or there will be a tie breaker set. Therefore I started to play more aggresive, going for more risky and powerful shots. This helped for a couple of games till he adjusted to the depth and timing. The score was now 5-4 with me in the lead. One more game and I would be victorious. It was my serve now and we battled it out in that last game, going back and forth for a single point. We ran forwards, backwards, and accross the court just for that tiny green ball. The game ended with my serve, sending the ball flying straight down the middle earning me an ace and a victory. Congratulations came my way along with a happiness. All those extra practice seesions did pay off, and was only going to get better because I was gonna continue to drill at my weakness till I was close to perfection. I learned from this experience that life is like a train. Trains can get derailed sending them off course
towards another direction, or completely stopping its motion. It is then your choice whether to get back on track. If so it requires hardwork and time to get it back on the track towards its intended destination. From these two lessons I know it will help me succeed wherever I attend college. By instilling the idea of change when something does not work, and a solid work ethic to get the job done.
Jimmy worked like a demon to make up for the difference. By age 8, Jimmy was skillful enough to enter into tournaments, and he made a good showing in them. Jimmy did not win his first tournament until he was in the ten-year-old competition. The losses only gave him determination and the wins only gave humbleness. Jimmy Connors, a paragon of all sorts, had an unconquerable spirit. Jimmy knew that he had to be himself out on the tennis courts if he wanted to succeed. At times in Jimmy’s career, he was known as a spoiled brat for his cocky attitude. He was often called “mouth”. He had this spirit ever since he was a young boy. Being the smaller kid of his age group, he had to have something to hold onto.
However, I was always an optimist and tried to convince myself that I could defeat him (Yeah right!). We approached the table and shook hands. In the few initial minutes, we warmed up, just casually rallying the ball around, but even then he was playing better tennis than I ever had. The coach then blew his whistle which concluded the warm up and signaled the commencement of the match. At this point in time, I tried to swallow all the fear and anxiety that I had and to face my opponent valiantly and courageously. The match began and before I had fully realized, he had won the first game 21-05. He had won it with the utmost ease, returning even my best shots without any struggles or even remote difficulty. I tried not to feel discouraged, saying to myself that he still had two more games to win and that I would not give in without a fight.
I had little to no motivation for a while and thought that maybe wrestling wasn’t the sport for me. I had shown promise in practice but as soon as I got on the mat for a tournament or duel I just drew a blank. I wasn’t executing any of the techniques I had learned after so many repetitive drills. I wasn’t the only one that had faced such miserable losses but it felt like it. My teammates helped me through my rut by giving me additional advice during practice and being in my corner while I wrestled matches. It was a great feeling knowing that I had people who had my back whenever I needed help. The wrestling team was a close knit group that dealt with all our problems together. We worked hard and played hard together till none of us could go any further. We were each other’s motivation, rivals, and family on and off the mat. If I had any doubts about a match my team thought the exact opposite and made sure that I understood why they believed so. But what made us a strong unit was the fact that we had similar goals and values. None of us wanted to lose and planned to make it past districts. We all wanted to take home hardware not only for our own self recognition but also to bring back a trophy to put on our principal’s desk who just so happened to love the wrestling program about as much as our team. All of us valued the effort that was put into every early morning practice so no one looked down on each other. The connection we had as a team made my experience wrestling all the more worth
The server on the other team once again threw the ball into the air. This time, my teammate sprawled for the ball, and made a perfect pass to me, allowing me to set the ball and have my co-captain smash it to the ground. I looked once again at the faces of my teammates. Things were different now. I knew at once that they knew what I knew. We were the winners of that game. We remembered that at that point, and were assured of it when the referee blew the final whistle after I served an ace on game point.
The qualities I have developed on the tennis team have helped me become a better team member and individual. I now find myself volunteering more in my community to provide an example of never giving up and with the realization that someone is always there to help when you need help. Every day I am reminded that I could have given up. But I didn’t and that is what made me a stronger person to go forth and fulfill my dreams and
I felt depleted, I thought that I had finally gotten the hang of my emotions on the court. In return she stated, “Mistakes will always happen, you can't ignore them, but you also can't get caught up in them. I know it is hard, but you have to learn because that is how you get better in sports if you want to continue playing.” This thought whirled around my head for the following months; if I wanted to really excel in volleyball I had to finally fix my attitude, for the better.
The next face Dedham won it. The kid shot the ball immediately, but I saved it. The one thing my coach always said to me was, “to use the element of surprise; they would never expect you to leave the net.
As we all know, America is a nation of sports enthusiasts. Most Americans participate is some kind of sporting event, either as a spectator or as a competitor. In the pantheon of great American sports, there is one that stands out. It has been called the great American pastime. Yes, that great sport known as tennis. Tennis requires a mastery of many skills to be able to play competitively, but the primary skill needed to win in tennis is the serve. The serve is the primary offensive weapon used I tennis, because it is the only time when a player gets to put a ball into play. The player controls the speed, the placement, and the spin of the ball. With proper procedure, the serve can win many points and games for the server. The technique I will demonstrate is used by most professional ten...
The core values of respect and dignity are the elements that held us together as a team and I was not giving up because we worked too hard to win games and to move forward and because of that I stood up and went above and beyond for the team. The difference is not everyone might have done that if they got injured, however, because I considered all of my teammates equals I believe that it was the just and right thing to do because otherwise we would probably have lost the game. In addition, I was not thinking about myself it was about the team as a whole and the effort it took to get where we were at was not an easy task and it met everyone’s needs because we were not
sense of relief knowing that I am in fact capable and it gave me confidence. Now I can say that I
During sectionals, our county’s championships, we were seeded against the second best doubles team in the area. Due to this essay’s prompt, you already know that this is no Hail Mary match or heartwarming underdog tale, but rather a story of failure. We lost the entire match in less than half an hour. But the whole time, I remember laughing, bonding with my teammate, and just enjoying myself. I learned that I’m not always going to be the best at everything or the winner of the match, but that doesn’t mean that I should stop trying or stop enjoying myself. Losing that match didn’t take away from all of the hours of hard work that we had put in to get there, and it sure didn’t make our efforts any less
...They learned how to work together as a team, and how to share ideas and think outside of the box. As the leader of the entire effort, I also met with the team members who did not stay involved with the team to understand what could the team or I have done different to make them feel closeness or cohesiveness with the others.
Another thing that helped me realize I was the right person was the fact that my friend and I put the team together. My friend and I basically recruited people. We picked
Throughout the past few weeks and months I have been attempting to alter my behavior whilst on a tennis court, many times when I play or execute a poor decision or shot I often react in a negative way with negative thoughts such as doubt as well as negative actions like: shouting, throwing my racket or hitting the tennis ball out of frustration. This often leads me to lose concentration, which in turn increases my frustration as I will continue to lose points as well as stile thinking about the error i made before. It is very important that I change this behavior because it will allow me to maintain focus throughout tennis matches, furthermore I will offer much less of a mental advantage to my opponents as they will not know how I am feeling
The ball comes speeding over the net and slams down onto the face of the court landing just beyond the base line, the line running along the back of the court. I had called her winning point... "out." As I turned towards her, I could see the anger building in her eyes. We walked towards each other, and with only the net separating us, she began to confront me. She argued that, as she saw it, the ball was obviously in and that we should replay the point. I wanted this game as much as she did and we were both standing strong. I finally decided that there was no use in fighting. We had to resolve this argument between ourselves because there were no line judges to decide for us. We decided to replay the point and she won. I tried to convince myself that there would be times when a call would be questionable and that I should try not to point fingers. I still went home discouraged that night because I knew that the call I had made was fair.