My Life As An UnAthletic Athlete

I’m a college athlete, and I hated gym class. 

In elementary school, I was the skinny girl who ran like a duck and was the first to drop out of the beep test. I was picked last for kickball, and no one wanted me on their relay team. In middle school, gym uniforms were introduced, highlighting my physical difference from my peers. I swam in the basketball shorts and gray top with no trace of fat or muscle on me. I copied the other girls by hiking up my shorts and tying my hair into the highest of ponytails in hopes of matching their athleticness through aesthetics. I wanted to be like the soccer girls, the lacrosse girls, the field hockey girls, but I was the tennis girl. Tennis wasn’t a real sport, and I wasn’t a real athlete. 

I kept the fact that I did indeed play a sport a secret because I was scared of people looking at me and being surprised. I only felt validated as an athlete when I was with my tennis community– other kids who looked like me, and if they didn’t, they didn’t look at me with a disapproving eye.

I remember when I decided to take tennis more seriously. It was the winter of eighth grade, and I wanted to play on my high school team in the fall. I started taking private lessons and entering any clinic that would have me. I began taking videos of me practicing to track my progress. Watching those videos now, I understand my fear of not being seen as an athlete. I had knobby knees, oversized glasses, and no trace of rhythm. Despite these exterior factors, I kept playing because it fueled something deep inside me.  

As with any sports journey, mine has had its ups and downs. Most of the time, my low points come back to my lingering fear of being not seen as an athlete. Can people see through me to my uncoordinated elementary school core?

I’ve contemplated giving up on tennis many times, but not as seriously as I had this past year. 

I never knew if I was going to college, let alone if I was going to play tennis in college. When I was forced to make life decisions I avoided, I finally made one for myself. I decided to play tennis in college and give myself the success I had never achieved in high school.

When I got to college, I completely crumbled under the pressure. I entered a team full of seniors that didn’t talk to me. My schedule prevented me from coming on time to practice, forcing me to warm up by myself, which is an almost impossible task in a two-person sport. The transition to college, far from everything I had known, stripped every piece of muscle memory from me. I couldn’t hit a ball. 

This was the most frustrating experience of my entire life. I had all this potential bubbling inside of me, but I could not release it for others to see that I did, in fact, know how to play tennis. 

I spent the entire fall semester trying to unlock my talent with no success. When I got back home for winter break, I trained my body to remember that it once was capable of being an athlete, something I had forgotten the feeling of. I was scared of pushing myself and returning to the level I knew I could play at. 

While I’m now in my second fall semester, my fear of not being an athlete is still there. I can hit a ball this time around, but I’m still learning that my ferociousness on the court needs to be tapped into more than repressed. I’m scared that if I reach my full potential, which no one saw last year, my teammates will be angry that I pawned them into thinking I wasn’t a good player. I’m a good player with a weak mindset. I’m an athlete who is training her mind more than her body to be able to revenge on her freshman year letdown. 

Just wait, you won’t recognize me soon enough.

• college
• mental health
• sports