Personal Identification Report
As an eight-year-old pipsqueak who was regularly pitted against the twelve-year-old Goliaths of Albuquerque's 12U tennis division, losing 0-6, 0-6 became a natural part of life, and I hated it. In fact, my tournament to-do list consisted of a dreadfully long car trip, suffering defeat upon defeat to another unnamed middle-school giant, and then drowning myself in a sea of tears while my dad lectured me about "unforced errors" on the trip home. As a result,
I started to run away from tennis. I performed rain dances on tournament weekends and engaged in games of perpetual "hide-and-go-seek tag" (which consisted of my dad struggling to shove me into a car) as literal attempts to flee practice. I would do anything to escape the wounds of loss and the stings …show more content…
Deja vu. Similarly, over the course of the next few months, I suffered many losses, but with each defeat, I was able to identify a weakness in my game. Gradually patching the chinks in my "tennis armor", I eventually fought up the rankings to win a tournament of my own and earned the title of
"superchamp", a junior qualified for state-level tournaments. As a major personal victory, my promotion significantly boosted my confidence and helped me to escape the ravine of self-doubt that had trapped me upon my arrival in
Austin. As a result, I started to stretch out of my comfort zone academically, and applying the perseverance of tennis to school, I was able to overcome the pressures of failure and experience a period of unprecedented growth in school and in life.
When all seemed hopeless, tennis, my childhood enemy, acted as my lifeline and gave me direction. Though I was constantly buried under the stresses of academics and my family situation, tennis gave me a way to relieve myself of the accumulating pressures of life. In the 'dark ages' of eighth grade, tennis was the one thing that I could be proud of, and, to this day, I still relish the feeling of blasting away my troubles with a spectacular
I started to run away from tennis. I performed rain dances on tournament weekends and engaged in games of perpetual "hide-and-go-seek tag" (which consisted of my dad struggling to shove me into a car) as literal attempts to flee practice. I would do anything to escape the wounds of loss and the stings …show more content…
Deja vu. Similarly, over the course of the next few months, I suffered many losses, but with each defeat, I was able to identify a weakness in my game. Gradually patching the chinks in my "tennis armor", I eventually fought up the rankings to win a tournament of my own and earned the title of
"superchamp", a junior qualified for state-level tournaments. As a major personal victory, my promotion significantly boosted my confidence and helped me to escape the ravine of self-doubt that had trapped me upon my arrival in
Austin. As a result, I started to stretch out of my comfort zone academically, and applying the perseverance of tennis to school, I was able to overcome the pressures of failure and experience a period of unprecedented growth in school and in life.
When all seemed hopeless, tennis, my childhood enemy, acted as my lifeline and gave me direction. Though I was constantly buried under the stresses of academics and my family situation, tennis gave me a way to relieve myself of the accumulating pressures of life. In the 'dark ages' of eighth grade, tennis was the one thing that I could be proud of, and, to this day, I still relish the feeling of blasting away my troubles with a spectacular