Stereotypes Of Tennis Essay

All my life I’ve played tennis. I played tennis in kindergarten, middle school, high school, and still playing it now. However, to some people, tennis isn’t the most appealing sport; they view tennis as boring, easy, two players hitting a ball around a court, and grunting very loudly. I don’t see these stereotypical characteristics as negative but perceive them differently and as a challenge.

Gribben 2 Tennis, to me, is a sport that requires quick thinking, predicting the tennis ball’s placement, and a lot of focus. I first realized this when I started playing tennis. I started playing when I was 5-years-old and I have my older sister to thank for that. When I first picked up a tennis racquet and started playing, I realized how difficult the sport actually was. You wouldn’t just hit a tennis ball and expect it not to go out. What you had to do was to “split-step,” turn your body to the left or right, swing your racquet to either side, and make windshield wiper-like-motion into the ball all in order. These complicated but now simple steps are what got me interested in tennis and I wanted to learn more about it.
Wanting to learn more about tennis made me perceive the stereotypes of tennis differently.
Grunting, while hitting a ball, sounds annoying to many people, and I sometimes view it as annoying. However, grunting in tennis is showing that you’re working hard and pushing yourself. Not everyone wants to grunt on purpose, it is sometimes obnoxious to the players too, but they’re trying hardest. Even when I play, I grunt sometimes. When I’m exhausted and hit the ball fast, but with control, I’ll grunt. It’s exciting to hit the ball fast and grunt at the same time, and doing a series of steps to hit the ball; it’s what drives me to play
tennis.

Gribben 3 However, wanting to keep playing tennis because of what you do in it can be a challenge. When I was playing in high school, during my sophomore year, I developed Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML), which itself wasn’t the main problem. Even with CML’s terrible pain and emotional impact it brings, it didn’t affect me playing tennis. However, CML caused Avascular Necrosis, bone death, due to not enough blood getting to the bones, which is the reason I wasn’t able to play tennis. For months I wasn’t able to play tennis and it was terrible. Not being able to grunt loudly and do a series of steps is a huge challenge that I had to overcome. If I played tennis, even when the doctor specifically told me not to, hurt me physically. I would feel pain every time I would take a step. I hated it. Not being able to play was much more difficult than going through the physical pain that CML brought, so I did something different to satisfy my need to play; helping with tennis team practices. This satisfied my appetite to play tennis Right now I’m still not allowed to play tennis; however, I am helping assist with tennis team practices. Even after being affected by diseases that make you crippled, where you can’t play a sport or even run, I still motivate myself by doing something tennis related activities. I am now in my senior year, instead of playing, I’m going to be assisting. I plan to hopefully get better this year and able to get the top seed or second to top on the high school tennis team; this is why I still play.