In Tennis, Love Means Nothing: But To Me, Love Became Everything

Noel Alberto
Sep 7, 2018 · 5 min read

First of all, it’s been awhile since I’ve written on here. Should I apologize? Although it’s my nature to say “sorry” for a lot of things, I won’t on here. Why? Well this is my own personal blog. So there’s that.

I had a talk with someone who I really didn’t know well over Instagram. He asked me “Why tennis?”. You know what that’s a good question that many of you don’t know the answer to. So shoutout to my chat with my mans Woo from UNCG for this (also another shoutout to one of my good friends Michelle who called me at the US Open just know about my story)

For those of you who knew me growing up, basketball was my first love. However, that love died out a little (still love it, just not as much, thanks for cutting me coach).

Heading into high school, I had my heart set on playing a sport, no matter what it was. Golf? Tried it. My dad bought me clubs, but it didn’t work out. Lacrosse? My cousin had a lacrosse stick, but equipment was expensive. Pass. Tennis? Oh why not. I have a racquet in the shed, and some tennis balls. Let’s try give it a go.

Four years of high school tennis, four years of club tennis at UMBC (two as VP), but little did I know that choice to play tennis became my whole life post-grad.

That one time I started on varsity in high school lmao

Ranking Talk And Picture Perfect

Around senior year of high school, my friend Adam — who is/was big into E-Sports and is kicking butt in the community — asked me how the tennis rankings worked to see if it worked for a game in the E-Sports community. We talked for awhile about it, and it finished with him recommending to me that I should try blogging since I “know a lot about sports”.

I dabbled in blogging for about a year or so until I stopped because college took over my life. I never imagined getting into the world of sports writing (or writing in general because I absolutely hated it) until one lucky day in February 2015.

I was messaged on one of my old Blogger posts asking if I was interested in writing about European football for a website called VAVEL. I said, “Sure, let’s give it a go.” While I did some writing for the UK edition of the website, I decided to look at the other versions of the website to see what else I could write about.

I came across the US edition and saw that tennis was lumped into the “More Sports” category. That lit a fire under me because tennis is more than just a sport in “More Sports”, it has a global audience and is very big here in the United States.

I put a team of writers together and all of a sudden, “More Sports” just became tennis. In came to a point where I got the webmaster of the website to give us a little tennis tab on the page, so you could say I’m the “founder” of VAVEL USA Tennis.

Three and a half years later after grinding away over 1000 articles, I’ve spent 2018 traveling the United States covering different events. February 2018 → September 2018: NY Open (Long Island), TieBreak Tens (New York City, Madison Square Garden), Citi Open (Washington DC), Western and Southern Open (Cincinnati), US Open (New York, Flushing), and soon to come Laver Cup (Chicago). I’m proud to say I’ve completed a “Media Slam” this year covering an exhibition, an ATP 250, an ATP 500, a Master’s 1000, and a Grand Slam.

Traditions never die. Black generic D6 shirt on Finals Sunday forever.

Outside of writing, I’ve tried my hand at photography which I have to thank my dad for for getting my interest in it, and lending me his equipment. It started with a mirrorless Olympus that I didn’t know how to work. Some tutorials later I finally figured it out. I started shooting at the 2016 Citi Open with it followed by the 2017 Western and Southern Open before pops whipped out the DSLR for me.

After shooting as a fan at last year’s US Open, I traveled with UMBC Club Tennis to shoot their tournaments. Along the way, I learned more about the camera and sports photography and even made some new friends at UMD, Columbia, and Northeastern University. Shoutout to my ading Kaitlyn for letting me travel around with them, I might be a hassle sometimes but hey, I love being around the team.

My teams ❤. Columbia, UMBC, and UMD. Coming soon: Northeastern

Coaching Season

A few months after I graduated, I still wanted to be involved in tennis somehow in Maryland, and that’s when I came across a USTA coaching gig. Funny enough when I applied, my boss and school’s club tennis founder, Alex, said he had planned to ask me to do it.

Little did I know how much I would fall in love with coaching and building bonds with my little kiddos. I coach elementary schoolers before and after school, teaching them not only how to play tennis but other life lessons along the way.

Back at it again at Pointer’s Run Elementary starting next week

I’m ready for my kids to play “Guess my age”. For what it’s worth, Coach Noel is 16 everyone. I’m ready to teach them things outside of tennis such as these different life lessons we give them each week because those lessons are more valuable in the long run with or without tennis. I’m ready for kids to get super competitive over winner’s tickets and to be able to give more lessons outside of classes to them and their families.

I have had complaints to my friends about kids just misbehaving, fighting, crying, and all that. That’s still way better than what I had to deal with in PG County and DC in the summer where kids were just brutal… and racist.

Three seasons, 250 kids, and 10+ elementary schools later, I had such a blast that I’m all ready to do it again come next week.

And there you go, there’s my story. It was a dream of mine to be in the world of sports growing up, I just never thought it would be tennis and that it would take over my whole life :).

Noel Alberto

Written by

UMBC Grad. 🇵🇭🇺🇸. Lover of all sports. Tennis editor at VAVEL. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

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