A day in the life of an athlete
The Real Performance
Dancing. Praying. Listening to Music. These are all the things MVHS students do in order to get themselves in the zone to compete. With pressure to win, MVHS athletes find ways to withstand pressure and pursue their goal, representing their school as a team.
Madi Anderson-Au, the captain of MVHS’ Song team, shares her experience with rituals and how the entire team unites as they perform their ritual. According to her, the team performs a ritual where they tap each other's foot as a sign of good luck. The team performs its ritual before every competition and uses it as a way to regroup and reassure others that they have their back.
“I feel like the big part of [rituals] is more like the part where we say the motivational stuff like, ‘oh we got this, we’re going to go out there, remember big smiles, point your feet, straighten your legs’ and I feel like that’s the most important part because it encourages [others],” Anderson-Au said.
Before every game, her team usually shares some words of motivation, with the intention of creating a positive attitude in which they can freely express themselves and feel encouraged.
“We do this little thing where we put our feet in the middle and go around and tap each person’s foot and it’s supposed to be a kind of a good luck ritual,” Anderson-Au said.
With championship experience, the MVHS Song team performs as a family and believes that this ritual helps bring them closer to each other and form a strong bond. Anderson-Au believes that due to the close relationship amongst the team, they are able to be supportive of each other.
“In general, we’re a pretty tight-knit group since we’re a smaller group. So we have a chance to really connect with each other and really have that sense of unity with each other,” Anderson-Au said.
However, some MVHS teams don’t believe in having rituals and instead have a quiet locker room that consists of teammates who are listening to music or are trying to get into the zone by staying silent. Sophomore Tarun Sarang, an athlete who plays for the MVHS varsity football team, thinks that in their locker room the students are trying to be focused.
“Before the game it is pretty quiet [and we are] trying to get focused,” Sarang said. “Me personally, being quite or trying to be focused is better, but, some people like to talk. We are usually individually listening to music and getting our stuff ready.”
According to Sarang, team sports such as football require the team to make plays on the field in order to get everybody fired up. In fact, he believes that this is the best thing that helps motivate the football team.
“Especially in football [making an energizing play] invigorates everyone and gets them ready,” Sarang said. “Since it's a team sport it's largely based on everyone’s performance based on the field. If someone does one thing good then infects the team and everyone strives to do good.”
Other MVHS teams like to perform a physical routine in order to get all the team members in shape and ready to compete. Junior Vishnu Palaniappan, part of MVHS’ junior varsity tennis team, shares how their team do the same specific workouts before every game in order to get ready.
“We don’t necessarily have a ritual but we have a couple of practice and warms up schemes where we do certain exercises that gets us warmed up for games,” Palaniappan said. “It warms up the certain muscles that help us. Like we do some running, we do some hitting ... which will help us in accuracy and focus. We also get in a huddle and cheer each other.”
Palaniappan believes that cheers and rituals conducted by a team help unite the players and also makes the team support each other.
“[The] best atmosphere would be when we introduce lineups, everybody just claps and says ‘let’s go’ like that kind of motivating stuff it makes it really fun and it makes you excited to play,” Palaniappan said.
According to Palaniappan, every athlete in every sport plays with a passion that makes them unique from all the other athletes around them. As athletes perform pre-game rituals, many of them feel that these actions serve as a way to increase confidence. For them, rituals are another way to bolster hope and help a team get closer.
“It was last year, we did not do as well as we wanted to and someone was just like, ‘oh, ‘cause we forgot to do the foot-tapping thing,’ and we were like, ‘did we?’ and ‘oh my gosh, we did,’” Anderson-Au said.
I walk alone on the court. No teammates, no coach, just myself.
I’m used to it by now. Fighting my own battles on the court, solving each problem as it approaches. Whatever I do on the court is a reflection of my desires and my own choices regarding dedication, playing smart and pushing myself.
I often say that the tennis court is a cage, a place where I am trapped with another person, and no one gets in or out without coming out on top. And although not every match results in a victory, I’ve learned something every time I step out on that court.
When I played my first tournament, I found myself vulnerable to the problems I was facing on the court. Whether it came from my own mistakes or from the sheer talent of my opponent, being boxed inside a cage wasn't helping either. It wasn’t from that tournament that I learned how to win or play smarter. In fact, I still have that problem today, and while I am slowly getting better at playing smarter, my losses now stems from another factor — self-esteem.
Every day, I find myself comparing my own game, my own progress, to the many people I train with, and I get jealous. I am working hard and putting in the effort. I just feel like I’m not good enough. Getting frustrated with my own results, I feel as if I am getting nowhere while everyone else around me is improving all the time.
Just a couple of weeks ago I cried after practice, after losing a practice match. Not because I lost but because I was not able to close out my points. I yelled on the court:
Should I Quit?
Constantly hearing the whispers of doubts and comparisons made by my father, I start second guessing my own abilities on the court.
Progressing
It's taken a while for me to be comfortable with my own progress and not allow anyone's achievements dictate my own.
Love
My love for the game started as a child, and although I was pushed by my father to persue the sport, I eventuallycame to love it on my own terms
Feeling trapped
In tennis, the greatest problem I encounter when I play as it separates me from the real world, making me deal with my own problmes without running away from them.
“Why can’t you just finish off the points.”
And letting out my frustrations wasn’t enough.
The cage was closing in on me, and I felt as if I was suffocating with no one to help me. I could feel the weight of my tears dragging my eyelids down, and the cage surrounding me wasn’t helping.
This was just proof of my lack of progress. I cried in the car because I felt like I was on an endless cycle — one which had no destination.
Everyone around me keeps telling me that I am improving and making progress. My coach, my friends and my family are always there for me but, my dad often says: don’t compare yourself to others, reflect on your own progress; judge yourself based on your own progress. And I get mad, every time he says that. Every single time, because I can’t look at myself like that. And when I do all I see is someone who hasn’t even made an inch of progress within the past five years.Those are the moments when I question myself, “Why I do I even play?”
And I think about how easy it is to give up. How easy it is to walk away from the pain, from losing or from the fitness sessions that my body aches from every single day. How easy it would be to simply say:
“I quit.”
I have been asking myself that question for years. And I sit thinking, but the answer is obvious to me every single time.
Quitting is just out of the picture.
The number one thing tennis had thought me is to fight. Fight when I’m mentally weak, fight when I’m physically weak, and to fight when no one else believes in me. I’ve realized that even though I can walk away from tennis, I can’t walk away from losing and tennis has taught me how to cope with my losses.
The tennis court is a cage, a place where players fight and claw their way out of with grit, hard work and determination, and giving up doesn’t exist when you want something so bad. This cage, this one painted court that holds nothing but my hate in its corners, has made me who I am today.
Even through the suffering, I have to remember why I fell in love with this sport in the first place. Six years ago, I came to fight. And the cage won’t stop me from fighting anytime soon.