Lettering in Tennis

High School Tennis. 

You two love it. All of it. Your truest love, Tennis. Both of you are a natural at everything you have try but more importantly you are willing to work hard to improve. Even at this young age, you both dream of getting a scholarships and playing in college. Nobody wants this more for you than I do, believe me. But I have to tell you that this dream of yours is not going to be easy. See, there are a lot of things that kids your age don’t realize that makes this dream harder to achieve than you know. But I believe in you two and I know with hard work you can see any dream realized. 

First Congratulations on Lettering, you both desired it, truly. 

I want this to be fun for the both of you. The entire process. Youth sports, high school, and eventually college itself. What I am going to say might come as a shock, but there a ton of people who are already lying to you. They say that having fun is the only thing that matters. They will manipulate the rules, adjust the game itself, and attempt to alter how we do things to make things “fun."

Your father, as a person who has played at the top of his sport, having fun is near the bottom of the list of his priorities for you two.

You will come to realize that the best part of sports is being a member of a team. Having an important role in that team and being a contributor to winning or losing will be one of the greatest experiences of your life. It transcends fun. Fun is for birthday parties, swimming pools, and playgrounds. Sports are designed to have a winner and a loser. It’s why you play. It’s why you practice as hard as you do. It’s why your coaches push you as hard as they do. Winning is why we drive as hard as we do because it’s the only thing that matters. If we aren’t going to keep score, then what is the point of playing a sport? We can play catch out front, shoot hoops out back, or take grounders in the driveway. But if you are going to be a member of a team, winning is the priority. 

You will find aspects of the game that are fun for you, but there will be a lot that simply is not fun. There will be days that you will hate it. Days you won’t want to get up and practice. Teammates or coaches you can’t stand. And all of that is okay because there will also be pieces of the experience that will be the greatest joys of your life.

Never be disrespectful to any adult who is talking to you. But when an adult tells you that having fun is the only thing that matters, and winning and losing don’t matter, they are wrong. They are a part of a large group of our society who are overly concerned with feelings, and manipulating things to be “fair,” and making sure that the kids who aren’t cut out for sports can feel included. What’s worse, they want kids like you, who show promise, to be held back and limited because the other kids can’t keep up. That’s not your fault. So, be courteous, but don’t believe what they are trying to sell you.

It's Not Going to be Easy

Playing sports is tough. You have no idea the amount of time that you will have to invest in getting better at your chosen sport. The hours of endless practice are absolutely necessary for you and your team to get where they need to be to win. And that is just the beginning. 

The good ones, your favorites like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic put in more practice than what their coaches demands. Once they leave the training facility, their own practice time begins. You will have to do the same things. Most people don’t realize that no matter how good you think you are and how good your team is if you want to be great, you will need to do more and more away from your team. It’s the natural process of your heroes. If you want to be like them, you will have to be self-motivated and find ways to improve all on your own.

 You Will Never Be More Important Than You Team

The fastest way to kill the momentum of a team is to have individuals care more about their own success than that of their team. You will never be bigger than your team. Selfishness, individuality, and a “me attitude” is the surest way to fracture something good. 

Your coaches have forgotten more about your sport than you could possibly know, so if you think you know more than them, you are dead wrong. Your coaches are not only managing dozens of players, but they also have a plan. This plan must be orchestrated in a very particular way, and all of you athletes have a role to play to make the plan work. The minute one of you goes rogue and begins to go off script, the more likely that coach’s plan begins to fail. 

Every decision you make for High School Tennis, you must put yourself last. You must ask yourself if your choices are for the benefit of the team, or for you. If the answer is not “the team,” go the other direction. 

A mantra for the teams should be simple and poetic but say everything we needed to ensure success: The team, the team, the team.

  

Relationships Matter Most

I’m saving the best for last. If I can impart one lesson to you in our time together, the most important one is to recognize the importance of relationships in what makes life so sweet. As Dave Matthews says, “It’s not where you are, but who you’re with that really matters.” 

Look at the people we surround ourselves with, our friends, the people we play tennis with. Almost everyone we hold most important in my life outside of family are individuals who have been brought to us from our time in sports. 

Nothing excites your dad and I more than how much you two love to play tennis. I promise to support you in every phase of this journey, without undue pressure to play at all. I want you to love to play, and I never want to be a source of negativity to your experience. But I do want you to know the reality of taking on this life. Love your teammates. Appreciate the grind. And just win, baby.