I wanted
to take a moment of your time to share with you a lesson about dedication. I will be pontificating for a while here, but
I haven’t had the chance to brag as much this year as I have in the past, until
now.
Like all
MSHSAA (Missouri State High School Athletic Association) sports, tennis opponents are governed by the size of the school.
There are two divisions in Missouri: big schools and small schools.
Many small schools do not even have tennis available. Tennis has a
rich history dating far back in time, to the 1500s in France (even earlier I've
read). It is a game that is available to anyone that has access to a
racket and a public court. We are blessed in Belton to have 10 courts
available at Yoekum Middle School open to the public 9 months a year (nets are
supposed to be taken down in the winter). But as public as the sport may
be, that does not guarantee that all participants have an equal shot at
success.
Tennis
is an unfair sport in the state of Missouri. It is a country club sport.
Many families of students that attend Belton schools do not have
disposable income available to allow students to take private lessons at tennis
clubs in the Kansas City area. The fees can be staggering: $40+ /
month for club membership plus $60+ / hour for lessons. The kids who win
tournaments, districts and more have years of this under their belt before even
stepping on the court for the first day of practice. Not to take anything
away from those kids, they do put in their time to succeed and have dedicated a
lot of effort to achieve their status in the area. But they had the money
to do it. The girl that won our individual district competition was a
sight to see. She looked professional. She would have made me, a
guy who has played tennis since I was little, look silly.
But I
did a little bit of calculating the other day. My math may be slightly
off, but here is what I figured: Let's say that the girl got a discount on
lessons and only had to pay $50 /hour for lessons after her $30 month club
membership (I think I will make some conservative estimates.) She
practices AT LEAST 3 hours a week, and that is 12 hours a month, so at a
minimum she is paying $630 a month for lessons. That is $7,560 a year.
If she has been playing for all 4 years of high school she has paid over
$30,000 for her ability to play tennis like that. Many of the top players
have been taking lessons longer than that, and my estimates really only go up
from there.
The point
is that my players can't afford that. Belton kids usually don't have
disposable income available like that. That doesn't keep them from just
going up and practicing on their own, which they have done. But it isn't
the same thing. It isn't individualized attention. I am not mad or
disappointed. It is just the reality. The reality is that many of
these same kids must juggle a job with their dedication to help out their
families or at least to be able to afford their own cars. Most of the kids that I had on my team this
year came to summer workouts, where one of the coaches would be at the courts
to hit with the players. MSHSAA
regulates the amount of contact and the type of contact. Lessons from me, their coach, cannot happen
out of season.
Which
brings me to this year… We had 11 girls play for the team by the end of the
season. We had 4 freshmen out for the
team: Dakota, Abbie, Bridget and Zoey. With very little (if any) prior experience,
they along with junior Macalyn grew this year and got to experience the
camaraderie and fun that is a tennis team.
Dakota and Abbie actually did well enough over the course of the year
that each girl got to spend some time on the varsity squad. The 2 sophomores, Haley and Sara, each played the bottom of the varsity team and grew as players from
their lowly position as freshmen last year.
The #2 singles girl, junior Laurel, discovered she had some
power in the swing she had been working on the last few years. She played #2 all year for the Lady Pirates
and stuck with it despite being over-matched for a string of several
matches.
The one
girl who has been able to get a few lessons in the last 4 years, Jennifer,
had a medical issue arise the day right before the first match of the season,
and that kept her from playing her senior year after she had been voted
co-captain. She was fun to watch in
practice as she had gotten very strong and consistent with the game, but it was
devastating to watch her sit out the entire year. My heart broke for her. She came to every practice to support the
team. She was the moral support every
sports team needs.
Another
senior, Samantha, was in her 4th year of playing as well. Sam was easily frustrated because even though
she had spent 4 years playing, her swing just wasn’t where she wanted it and
often times let her down. She worked
many hours over the summer and tennis wasn’t her first priority. But she stuck with it and took on the freshman,
Abbie, as her doubles partner. I
admired her desire to finish through the year.
The last
senior I want to discuss is Kaitlyn G.
Also a co-captain, she came into the year as the top player on the team,
playing number one every match each week.
She didn’t take lessons. She just
played a lot. From a tennis coach’s
perspective, her technique was awful.
Her swing was backwards and detrimental to her game. Her serve looked like an asterisk
exploding. She ran around on the court
like a maniac. Nothing was really under
control.
But what
she lacked in technique, she made up for in heart. Despite her serve being so ridiculous, she
was very powerful. Not a match went by
this year with out a few aces. She was a
monster at the net, contorting her body to get to balls she had no reasonable
right to reach. She dove regularly onto
the hard court.
G had
to play the top girls on most teams.
Some teams didn’t throw their best players on the court against us
because they didn’t see us as much competition, and Lee’s Summit almost lost
their match early in the season because of it.
But being the number 1 on a team means that you are facing some stiff
competition all year. Kaitlyn had a
record this year prior to districts of 11-7.
Pretty darn good. But it was what
she did at districts that is the entire point of this rant that I am on.
Kaitlyn
was seeded 7th of 12 girls in singles in the district tournament
Friday of last week. Everyone seeded
above her had had private lessons (and many that were below her had them as
well). She won her first match against
Ruskin (a school in many of the same predicaments as Belton). She lost her second match to the girl who
took 2nd overall in the tournament, a Notre Dame de Sion girl who
had many years of lessons. But she lost
gracefully, never giving up and doing her maniacal running to get to balls in
the way I had seen her do all year. She
took a game in each set but lost 6-1, 6-1.
She
continued to play in the consolation bracket.
She won her next match pretty handily, but began suffering back
spasms. When she came off the courts she
was fighting back tears. Kait was
adamant about continuing to play. Her
next opponent was the number 2 girl from Lee’s Summit. This Lee’s Summit girl was the doubles
partner of the girl that might be winning the state championship in few weeks
so she had a high level of play.
Kaitlyn
got onto the court in the early afternoon for her 4th match of the
day and the girls battled it out staying neck and neck for the first few
games. They were only playing to 8,
since the consolation side matches are shorter.
Somewhere in the 3rd game Kaitlyn had to retreat to get a
high bouncer and ended up crashing backwards into the chain-link fence. It sent pain through her whole body and sent
the back spasms into overdrive. But she
played on. She went up in the match
after that, grinding out points with her improper swinging and chasing down
cross court strikes that the other girl trained and paid to be able to
hit. By the time the match was 6-3 in
G’s favor, she was literally biting her lip to hold back screams of
pain. Tears were falling and Coach
H and I debated pulling her off the court. She kept fighting.
By the
last game, she was playing on nothing but pure willpower, grunting out of a
place of pain that I have never tried to fight through in any sport. Every swing was sending pain through her body
that was visible to anyone watching. She
was beating a girl whose techniques were smooth, whose court movements were
fluid, and whose control was impeccable.
It was at
that moment that I realized I was watching the most dedicated sports event I
have ever seen played in front of my eyes.
Kaitlyn G finished that match winning her one of her final two
points on an ace with tears streaming down her face and shaking uncontrollably
from the back spasms. I don’t want to
make comparisons to Curt Schilling’s sock, or some Olympic race where a runner
crawls across the finish line, because I wasn’t there. But I was there to see this high school girl
get gutsy unlike anything I have ever witnessed.
She didn’t
win any sort of medal for that match.
She didn’t make the papers with that victory. She didn’t even get the recognition from many
teams because most of the schools had left by then. But what she did earn was my complete
admiration for the dedication to her game and her own success. She ended her four-year tennis career in a
condition no coach wanted to see, but with the determination that every coach
hopes to have in a player. Kaitlyn G
defeated a Lee’s Summit player who had paid thousands of dollars for swings
that came up short against outright willpower.
She ground out an hour on a back that was as rough on her as any of the
opponent’s forehands. She won against
herself.
I am very
proud of my girls. They may not have won
many matches this year, but they stuck through this season and earned the right
to be called champions. I hope everyone
gets the chance to witness a small victory of pride like I did Friday. Please congratulate the dedicated,
big-hearted Lady Pirates Tennis Team on a hard-fought season.
Coach
Mullen
***names changed for security***
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