Xinran (Rosey) C., Hadley E. Watts Middle School
Finding My Grip
Every single day is a brand new opportunity, so living a good and happy life means choosing to do what you love, enjoying every moment, and learning to love yourself. My idea matches with what Dottie Yeck always said: “Being Good + Doing Good = Having Fun + Being Happy”. I used to think this mindset was easy to maintain, until I stepped onto the courts for tennis tryouts.
I spent a whole month away on summer vacation. So walking onto the courts for the first day of tryouts, I immediately lost my confidence because everyone else looked super experienced, confident, and ready to compete. When the coach paired us together to start rallying, my face froze. The ball came to me, but instead of moving to get ready for my shot, I just randomly smacked it with my racket, and it ended up rolling into the net. Afterwards, my face turned red with embarrassment. I noticed sneaky conversations among the other players huddled by the net. I thought they were talking about how bad I did. But when the next ball came to me, I forced myself to focus only on the ball, and "shut out" the negative thoughts. I bent my knees and hit what I thought was a "perfect shot".
Somehow, I still ended up making the team, but I kept losing my matches, so I built up the courage to ask my coach for some extra help. She told me to stop panicking, focus on one point at a time, and not worry about the score. Eventually, I got better every day after my mindset changed. This led me to representing my team at Sycamore, and I actually won my first match there!
Winning that match told me that you always have to trust yourself, because you’ll never know what you''re capable of. To build a happy life, you just need to remember that when things don''t go your way, you must refuse to quit, treat your mistakes as feedback instead of failure, and focus on your own effort. It reminds me of a quote by Eileen Gu (my favorite freestyle skier) "I train like I''ve never won, and I compete like I''ve never lost." To me, this means practicing hard and performing with confidence, matters more than winning or losing. By trusting myself on and off the tennis court, I am building a happy life where I can achieve anything.
