Have you ever been scared to try a new sport? After realizing at the age of eight that football wasn’t going to be my thing; I tried tennis. At first I wasn’t in unanimous agreement with my mom when she mentioned tennis to me, but soon my nervousness began to wane like the setting sun. I started to warm up to the idea of trying tennis out.

The first day of practice was difficult because I had to choose a racket that would soon be my best friend. I walked into the shop; I spotted a ying to my yang! I rushed over to a black and white racket which might have been a zebra had I seen it mounted on my wall. I told my coach that this was the racket I wanted. He nodded and soon took me out to court number one. Then he showed me how to swing the racket and explained the game of tennis to me to some degree. I had set a couple of goals before practice and one of them was to hit the ball on first try and make it go in the green so I would not look like a complete idiot.

After he explained a few more things to me; he got a basket of balls and went to the other side of the net. The moment of truth had come. I started preparing to hit the first ball. He knocked it over the net. It floated like a hot air balloon. I ran up to it, but made no contact with the ball whatsoever. I languished like a slow-moving sloth. I was no longer lively with energy. There were no thoughts of being jaunty left inside of my big head. My face felt as if it had been dipped into a boiling hot pool of lava.

At that point, I just wanted to lie on the court and scream at myself for doing so badly; but before I could do so, my coach acclaimed me. I looked at him with a confused facial expression and tilted my head as though I were trying to read something written on the bathroom stall door. I asked him why he was happy with me since I had missed the ball completely. He answered me with a satisfied voice, “because you had good form, good foot work, and you will get it next time.

To this day I remember him saying those motivating words and it always cheers me up whenever I am down. Now that I play competitive tennis, I get furious with myself constantly because I am eager to win. Even when I lose an important match and sometimes sprout a tear, I now realize that I can always get it next time.