I’m not sure where to begin, as my journey with tennis is a long one. I’ve played for sixteen years, and it has consumed my time and energy, both mentally and physically, for the greater part of those years. Like most athletes, any and all free time was dominated by homework and practice, and my weekends were spent competing in tournaments, waiting in between matches, and — more often than not — long drives back filled with overwhelming disappointment. I went to a tennis academy in Spain for my sophomore year of high school, and while I was there, COVID hit. When I came back to the States, my high school gave us the option to be either hybrid or fully remote, and I landed on the latter, because it would allow me to maintain tennis as my priority. The summer before senior year, I dislocated my knee at practice, and all my stats froze. Luckily, I met Coach Jeremy Loomis, Swarthmore’s Head Women’s Tennis Coach, at a showcase before my injury, and I verbally committed and got into Swat early decision by December of my senior year. Despite the immense time, energy, and money poured into fueling my tennis development, as well as my eventual decision to pursue college athletics, the sport was a decidedly negative force in my life.
Tennis, especially singles, is taxing for a number of reasons — I could go on and on about how isolating an experience singles can be. There’s loneliness felt on court, compounded by the inevitability of unforced errors, poor weather conditions, and the frustrating reality that you could throw your everything into a match and still lose. There’s cheating (what we call “hooking”), unhelpful or biased umpires, and annoying parents — basically, junior tennis (competitive tennis for all ages up to eighteen) is a hellscape to which most tennis players could attest.
But these circumstances apply to everyone. Tennis, for me — an already intense person — proved to be an incredibly stressful part of my life. My performance in matches affected my self-worth and image. Losses hit me hard, and winning was a relief, not a joy. Throughout the hours, sweat, and tears I put in, there was a lingering voice inside my head demanding why I wasn’t better. Tennis brought out the worst version of myself: the one that was judgmental, critical, unforgiving, and ultimately miserable. Any sane person might ask, then, why would you play college tennis? For some reason, I wasn’t ready to let go, and I hoped that college tennis would be the answer.
But that wasn’t the case. While there were so many novel, exciting things about playing on a team — an experience I had never had before — many of the same issues I had with tennis remained. On average, we’re a team of fifteen people, and usually half will be on a lineup for a match. I was consistently not one of those people. I struggled to understand why I rarely played, and when I did, I felt the same pressure I felt in junior tennis to perform. Every single practice felt like an arena where I had to prove myself, and any match I played in felt like life or death. I couldn’t allow myself to have an off day, and the phenomenon of not playing means that you start to see your teammates as competition, constantly calibrating where you stand in comparison to them — not to mention that our team dynamic was divisive and unsupportive, and during my first year, it felt like my coach had no interest in me as a player.
Back home from my first year of collegiate tennis, I had breakfast with my dad and when the topic of my team came up, I told him that I was a flop. The words were uttered initially as a joke, but they brought on a surge of emotion. If tennis was my defining feature, and I wasn’t even good enough to play, then who was I? That may sound dramatic, but it ate at me enough to consider transferring schools and dropping tennis altogether. Either because of laziness or stubbornness, I decided to remain at Swarthmore. By the end of summer, I was determined to return to campus my sophomore year with no expectations, the main goals being enjoying the team and embracing my role of cheering.
And so I did. But at one of our first matches of the season, my coach pulled me to the side. He told me to run to my room to change for an impromptu doubles exhibition set with one of my best friends, Anna Miller ’24. I was so excited that on the run up to my dorm, I shed a couple of tears. In a nail-biting tie-breaker, we beat Division I Loyola University Maryland’s exhibition doubles team. That was the start of my career as a doubles specialist. Doubles proved to be more strategic, fast-paced, and euphoric than singles had ever been for me. That season, I kept figuring out my doubles with Daniela Padron Castillo ’24, learning that much of what I loved about doubles was the freedom to be loud and expressive. I fondly remember a match we played against Johns Hopkins University where we lost 1-8, but would celebrate the few points we won so loudly that our teammates thought we were up.
Last season, my partner, Ella Strickler ’27, and I had a sixteen-match win streak at the number three doubles spot. Our secret? We were just having fun. The mindset shift that occurred for me after my first year made it such that every time I stepped on the court, I was met with appreciation and excitement rather than dread and pressure. My desire to win was not for myself, but also for Ella, and even more so for the whole team. I became a better player and a happier person when I deprioritized tennis from the exalted place it held in my life for so long. Not to mention our team culture significantly improved with waves of positive, uplifting underclassmen and determined upperclassmen who transformed our team into what it is today. This is not to say that my relationship with tennis is now perfect; I still deal with my own expectations and desire to perform for my doubles partner and team. But I’m incredibly lucky and grateful to have those opportunities to perform, and to have such a supportive doubles partner and teammates who always make the tough moments bearable.
As the end of the season approaches far more quickly than I’d like, I acutely feel the impending end of my time as a “tennis player.” While I’m probably even less ready than any younger version of myself had been to let go of tennis, I can now more fully appreciate all that it has given me. Swat women’s tennis has and continues to teach me so much about myself, about the kind of person I want to be, and what I care about. It proved to me that you sometimes have to stick with the hard things. It has brought me toward some of the most special people in my life and to this incredible team dynamic that we all now cherish deeply. It brought me to the transcendent feeling of being a single unit with Ella on the court and winning for something greater than yourself. Playing college tennis became one of the best decisions I ever made, and while I may leave SwatWTennis, SwatWTennis will never leave me.
