Rallying with Parents: Confessions of a Tennis Player | Part 2 of 5
“The Hunger Game” | Part 2 of 5
I was fourteen years old and playing in the sixteen-year-old age bracket in tournaments…and I wasn’t winning. My parents held a meeting with me. Yes, we had official meetings about my tennis held at the house. They told me they had decided to pull me back down to the fourteen-year-old division where I would have to prove myself. And that was that.
I won the next national tournament I played in the fourteen-year-old bracket in Arlington, Texas. My parents were happy, but still not convinced. They signed me up for another national tournament. They said that if I could do it again, I would be bumped right back up to play with the older girls.
In this national in Arizona, I won every match relatively easy all the way up to the finals. The girls weren’t strong enough to beat me at the time, and hardly anyone was smart enough to come up with a strategy that would work against a player who hit as hard as I did. I was cruising through the tournament, but things didn’t go as smoothly once I had reached the final championship match.
I won the first set easily. It had only been an hour, and I was halfway to the finish line. I could already taste sixteen-year-old matches again. Suddenly the momentum changed. This tiny girl on the other side started playing differently. Her game had completely changed, and I was left confused and bewildered for the next hour and a half. I lost the second set.
In junior tournaments at the time, a tie-breaker to ten points was played in lieu of a third set. I believe the USTA abbreviated matches so less children would get injured since lots of injuries happened in the third set when our little legs got tired and our technique started to get sloppy. Personally, I still think that it was a great decision. However, at the time, I did not.
Short tie breakers that decided the outcome of entire matches put a lot of pressure on my young shoulders. The nerves got to me when I knew I only had a few points left to decide a match I had invested so much time and effort in.
I couldn’t think straight the entire tie-breaker. There was no hope. I was afraid my mother was right. Maybe mentally I wasn’t ready to play with the older girls. And jeez, what would my dad think if I lost to a girl like this who was half my size? She was just tapping it back patiently, waiting for me to miss. Losing a match after winning the first set was never a good thing. Although many things can change a match, I somehow thought that my dad would think I had given the match away. He could always understand it when I would win a few games easily (after all, I was his superstar child with a ton of potential), but when I lost a few games in a row, it never made any sense to him. Not to mention, it drove him up the wall. I figure the only thing he could think of that would make sense to him when I started losing is that I had wanted to lose. Maybe thinking that whatever was happening on the court was still somehow under my control, even if it was me giving up, was more comforting to him. With my thoughts everywhere but on my court, I had already lost the tie-breaker before it had even started. I managed to get a lousy three points before she won the match with her quick ten.
I walked up to the net to shake my opponent’s hand. I remember both of our hands were trembling from nerves, adrenaline, and exhaustion. It was strange to see my entire hand envelope her little white fingers. She was incredibly small and nimble. She was smiling. I returned the smile for a second and then went and sat down on my bench. I held my breath and looked around the court. My dad, who had been sitting at the fence the entire match, was nowhere to be found. His sudden disappearance after a loss was nothing out of the ordinary. I leaned over my shoes and untied them. Letting feet breathe after a long match was one of the best feelings in the world. And this had been a long match even without a full third set. It had been a 2 1/2 hour match, and I knew that, not because of a watch, but because my red raisin-looking feet told me so.
I walked to the bathroom where I changed into dry clothes and stuffed my soaking wet tennis uniform into a plastic bag. I remember thinking my mother would have to deal with that bag eight hours later when my dad and I got home. It was never comfortable to travel after a match without being able to shower, but I had gotten used to it by then. I washed my face and wiped my salty arms and legs off with wet paper towels. My opponent walked in and smiled. I smiled back, but I really didn’t want to. She walked into the handicapped stall where I had just changed into dry clothes. It was a post-match routine, really.
I walked out of the bathroom and exited through the iron-gated entrance of the tennis club. My father had already pulled the car around. There, our old, green Lexus stood with the trunk open. I slung my tennis bag in, closed the trunk, and walked around to the passenger seat. Before I opened the car door, I thought to myself, I had at least won one set instead of losing two straight sets in a row… And I had made it to the finals. He couldn’t be that mad at me. I got into the car. Wrong. He was that mad.
I could tell he was angry because of his flaring nostrils. That was the dead give away. Oddly enough, he didn’t say anything. Not a word. All I heard was his quick breathing. Usually he would jump into what I had done wrong or what I could have done better. It wasn’t fun to sit through, but at least I knew what he was thinking. The silence made me nervous. I turned on the radio to listen to something else other than his snake-like breathing, but his hand snapped up to the stereo and turned the power off before I got a chance to hear the song I wouldn’t be listening to. For thirty minutes, he said nothing. For thirty minutes, I said nothing. And in those thirty minutes, I went from wondering what was going on, to trying to suppress laughter because the silence began to seem ridiculous, and then to feeling sick with fear as I began to realize just how angry he actually was.
Then sixty minutes later, my stomach said something. It said it was hungry. I had no choice; I finally walked my way around the silence.
“Dad,” I said, “Can we stop somewhere? I’m starving.” I looked at my dad. No reaction. I was convinced that he hadn’t heard me. “Dad…? Aren’t you hungry?”
My dad turned slowly to me and looked me steady with those hazel eyes of his. “Sorry. I’ve lost my appetite.”
I knew he was mad, but his answer stunned me. It hurt me. I nodded slowly, turned, and looked out of the passenger window. My window was my one escape. Just look out. Just look outside. Look at the sun shining. I had tried so hard. I had been so nervous. He had no idea — no idea! I started shaking. Lost his appetite? My anger suddenly reddened my whole body. And just like that, I simmered for another couple of hours. I believe that was the first time my body had physically ached from being so upset.
Eventually my dad took an exit. I had supposed we had only needed gas, but I didn’t know that my dad’s guilt would hit him so quickly.
“Jade, why don’t we get a couple sandwiches here while we get gas?” he asked while we pulled up to a gas pump. I turned to him slowly as he put the car in park. My lips quivered.
“No thanks. I’ve lost my appetite.” I couldn’t believe I had said it, but I did.
“Oh, bologna,” he replied. I went to the bathroom while he walked into some generic fast food place. When I walked back to the car, he had a sandwich waiting for me. We got back on the highway and drove all the way home. It was an eight-hour car ride, and I never touched my sandwich. As stubborn and juvenile as it seems, I’m still quite proud of my first silent little protest against the reaction I had received from my dad after losing a tough match.
When I got home I ate the entire kitchen, but that sandwich was left untouched for eternity. It’s probably still wrapped up somewhere rotting away. There is something about that refusal to eat that still feels bittersweet. Whether the strategy I chose hurt me or my dad more doesn’t matter to me, what makes this moment significant is that it was the first time that I stood up for myself, my effort, and my performance — even if it wasn’t perfect. And then it was also the first time that I recognized that my dad wasn’t always right. Unlike I had thought before that match, my dad didn’t always say the right thing. He didn’t always do the right thing. The glass had been shattered; the veil had been drawn. I was finally aware that he didn’t always understand what the right thing was. And I promised myself right then and there that no matter how my future child played in whatever sport he or she chose — if my child chose to play sports — I would always, always, always feed them afterwards. And it would be a big hearty meal too — the kind I could have eaten after a tough loss like I had had on that day and maybe felt a little bit better afterwards.
