Can't Win 'Em All

Our father always says, "It doesn’t matter how you play as long as you win." While it many not be the most appropriate speech you can get before a game, we, of course, know our father’s sense of humor.  The reality is if we don't win a match and we do in fact come home losers, our dad is still very proud of his little girls.

In every sport, there is a winner and a loser. One team goes home feeling happy and victorious, while the other almost always goes home with sagging shoulders and saddened faces. It’s true that everyone takes losing differently, but we assume most can agree the rush of excitement you get after you win any game, whether it be a tennis match against your twin sister or a basketball game against one of your high school’s biggest rivals, makes you feel so much more accomplished than when you lose.  While there are those few people who take losing well, and who look at the game as being well-played and hard-fought, many more will sit on the bus ride home in silence or take anger out on different objects. There are some who swear and those who could care a less.

It's always hard to accept the fact that there are others out there who are better than you. And sometimes you don't realize it until you come face to face with your opponent or the higher-skilled team the day of the big game.  The Greenwich area, for example, proves to be one of the greatest locales in the state filled with outstanding tennis players. Every year we are faced with the biggest matches of the season against schools like Greenwich Academy, Greens Farms Academy and St. Lukes. They bring forth very tough matches against us all, and we try our best to give them a well-fought match even if we’re out-skilled.

In tennis it’s easy to tell right from the warm-up how the match is going to end up. You learn your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses just from hitting back and forth a few times. Quickly you ask yourself questions like, “Do they have a stronger forehand or backhand?” “Can they run fast for a drop shot?” These questions may seem pointless, but like our coach tells us, strategies like these are key to winning matches because one of the biggest goals is to get your opponent to make the most mistakes.

While finishing a season undefeated and not having lost a set would seem ideal to any tennis player, life, however, isn’t always about winning.

Time and time again, after our dad gives us his famous speech about bringing home the trophy, he too knows as a former athlete that winning isn’t everything. Yes, while losses are unfortunate and everyone wishes they could be the best at everything they do, sometimes we learn more about ourselves by playing people who bring out our weaknesses. We both know after losing a match that we can view a loss as something that improves our aptitude and moves us one step closer to our long-term goals.

Thanks for reading! -Morg and Tay

Strength Passion and Determination

Tennis: a game played on a rectangular court by two players or two pairs of players equipped with rackets, in which a ball is driven back and forth over a low net that divides the court in half.

            Anyone who is a tennis player or is passionate about the game would give you a complete and utterly different definition than the simple one that comes up when you type tennis into the search engine at dictionary.com.

            Ultimately, tennis is sometimes viewed as this boring definition because of today’s high interests in other sports. When you turn on the television to catch up on the recent scores or open up the newspaper to the sports page, do you ever hear about tennis? The answer is probably not because most of the excitement is practically always over baseball, basketball or football. And while we can’t say we don’t love watching the NCAA on TV and cheering on our favorite football teams on Sunday nights, we wish that tennis would get a bit more coverage as well because to us, tennis is more than a game of “just a ball going back and forth.”

            It is a common question that many coaches, peers, and others ask. What does tennis mean to you?  To us, tennis is a game of strength, passion, and determination.  It is a mind game. The score can change at any moment, and each point must be taken with complete concentration looking ahead to the next point and not back on your last mistake.

            Tennis is one of the biggest interests and hobbies that connects us as twins on and off the court. It has been a huge part of our family since we were kids starting when our mom purchased our first matching pink Wilson tennis racquets and dressed us in matching Fila tennis dresses with ribbons in our hair. That was just the beginning of our love for the sport.

            It’s common for a child to want to try as many sports as possible. This was also true for us. Name a sport; we’ve played them all.  Basketball, field hockey, swimming, volleyball, dance, soccer, and softball. All great sports, but it was the sport of tennis that we fell immediately in love with. When we were 5, we would cry on the way to softball practice because we didn’t want to go.  Not so for tennis.  We would jump out and run onto the court before our mom had even put the car in park once we arrived at our tennis lessons.

            Even 10 years later the court has remained one of our favorite places to be. While it may appear to others as just a surface separated by a huge net in the middle, we see it as a place to challenge one another and have fun every chance we get. If you ask any of our friends where we would most likely be if not at school, they would instantly say “tennis practice.”

We are twin sisters, Morgan and Taylor, co-captains of the Hamden Hall Country Day School Girls Varsity Tennis Team. During this season we hope to interest you on how tennis has impacted our life throughout the years, and in our upcoming season with our new coach. 

            

We look forward to keeping you interested on the sport that means so much to us! Please keep checking out our blog to read more about us!!!!