Struggle is a word that always comes to mind when I reflect on my years as a junior player. As a late starter in the tournament scene, the insecurities that being judged as a “bad” player played a part in the way that I felt every time I walked into our club to play or take a lesson. Even if my relationship with my dad was always hard, he did say something that stayed with me for years and years.
He said that even if I was not as good as many players, if I managed to work more and harder than them, eventually I would catch them and pass them. He used the example of a car race in which a car is in the back, but it is actually going at a faster speed than the ones in the front, and he drew a picture of how it eventually caught up to them.
Those were simple enough terms for a 12-year-old kid to understand, and because I did love being on the tennis court and feeling the small improvements, it helped me on the process despite my constant reminders of how much better than me the best players in the club, the state and the country were.
The struggle was real but learning to manage it while recognizing the smaller victories kept me going, and when the distractions and burnout started to take over those players who had been collecting trophies from the very early ages, I was right there and ready to collect the results and experiences that I had paid my dues for. It is important to know that the distractions and the burnout also hit me, and it was hard to be a teenager and find ways to stablish priorities with the sport, the school and life, but I feel that I did a good enough job on that hard balancing act, and because of that I was able to enjoy the multiple facets of that stage.
As a team, we have to find a way to somehow value the struggle and enjoy dealing with it. It is soooooo hard sometimes, but since hardships are guaranteed, we have to embrace the trouble, learn to focus on dealing with it one step at the time, recognize the small victories, and still continue to expect the unexpected. Our job is not to help our kids or players avoid problems; our job is to help them learn tools to deal with them. Some of these teachings will take place with “words of wisdom” from our part, but most of the teaching will take place with being a proactive person and trying to be an example of how to manage the challenges. Kids see everything, and most importantly, they feel almost everything that is going on.
Helping a player set goals for their development is an important piece of the pie. Setting goals for us as coaches and parents on how we are planning on doing a better job while dealing with stress and challenges raises the ceiling of growth for our youngsters.
