Tennis Reflection

When I joined tennis I had played very little before. I wanted to learn new skills that would make me a better player. I new that because I was pretty much new to the scene that it would not come easy to me and so I made one of my learning outcomes and goals to show commitment to my activity and to stick it through until I saw that improvement that I wanted even if it did not show up right away.

I practiced very hard. I never got to play in any of the actual games because toughs were for the top most experience players but this did not stop me from coming to practice for weeks and work on my serve, my swings, and other things that needed to be worked on. I went to many practices and I worked on these things with drills, workshops, and practice games.

What were the outcomes, for me, the team I was working with, and others?
For me I just wanted to learn how to be a better player and to actually learn how to play a good game of tennis even if it meant having to to struggle. For the team the goal was to make it the best season ever and to make it to states for the first time in tennis history. I wanted this to happen as well but the main players were the ones that had to make it happen in terms of wins. I got to help cheer them on though and encourage them to reach there goal which they did!

I felt many things over the course of the tennis season. I felt frustration like on April 5, "So far I am lucky if I get even two serves over the net during a practice game" and I also felt happiness and accomplishment, " First of all I have finelly started to notice some improvment in my serving". It was a season of feeling both up and down but in the end I felt much happiness with what I had accomplished.


Like all team sports you have to be good at interacting with others and being part of a team. I interacted with team mates in many different ways. I either got to learn from my team mates and coach or cheer them on.

I perceived my improvement through out the season in the small things. Even if I got one serve over I would take this as a small win and a small improvement that was leading me on the path to get even better at tennis. I could not perceive improvement in actually counting games but thats okay because I had to start small and notice the small things that counted as improvement.

This was my most frustrating activity that I did this year but I still enjoyed it. I say it was the most frustrating because it was the one that took the most time for me to see improvement in myself and even after I did see improvement I still new I had miles to go. This showed on April 15 that even after weeks of practice, "I am getting better but I still have a long way to go". In the end I realized that I was far from the best on the team but it meant a lot to me personally that I was a much better player at the end then at the beginning.

That is what this activity meant to me, that I should be proud of improvement even if it is slow and small. I don't regret joining this team because it meant that I got to be part of a great team and learn skills from some wonderfully good players.

The value of this activity is that it a helps people learn new skills and gives them a chance to get exercise. It always made me feel to get out there and get some fresh air and learn a new skills. It made me feel stronger and healthier and accomplished which are such great things and so this activity has a lot of value to it.

This activity benifits others because we are a team and so we are all in it together and helping each other out. I received benefits from people who were helping me and maybe one day if I become a much better player I will be able to help others who are new to the game just like I was.

The learning out come that I meet the most was showing commitment to an activity. This is because tennis was not something I am a natural at and I started out honestly being a pretty poor player. It is very easy to get frustrated when you are not good at something and want to quit but I though I did get frustrated I never quit and only got better. I stuck it out by noticing the small things I was getting better at and picking little things to improve on like on April 28, "I am now able to get the ball completely over the net, I just need to learn to get it into the fight diagonal box and then my serve will be very good." Focusing on it piece by piece helped me commit to the activity better because it showed me that improvement, no matter how little, was indeed happening. I also meet the learning new skills one because even though I never became a all star serve I deffinatly developed a respectable serve. It was a long process but it did happen and it made me very happy like on May 5, "I am starting to think that my serves are really starting to come along now. I am far from perfect when it comes from serving but I played a practice game and I got over half my serves over."

I think that goal of getting five serves over was not I good one to make because it tennis it is less important if you get the serves over in a row and more important to look at the big picture of how many serves you got over in the game. I never reached the goal of five serves over at a time but it does not mean that my serve did not improve. I realized this on May 5 when I noticed, " I never got 5 over in a row like I want to but I did get way over 5 good serves in the course of the entire game." Doing that was more important than my original goal.

The most important lesson that I learned from tennis and that I can apply to the real world is that you may never become the best or great at something but this does not mean that you did not work hard and improve. I may never be a great tennis player, it is something that I am not natural good at but it is something I enjoy. I have learned that I don't have to be great at this activity to have fun and that just because I was never great enough to play in any games does not mean I did not improve because I did! People will never be the best at everything they do, you will have strengths and weakness' and this lesson is a very important and humbling one to learn and I am glad I have learned it.