Dear coach Watson,
I'm sorry.
Each week this year I chose a topic for my sports column. Once in awhile I interviewed somebody, but for the most part, I just wrote about whatever was going through my head. After about two hours at my computer, I would wind up with 800 words of at least mediocre sports comedy.
But I never wrote about myself.
As the year comes to a close, though, and I face the possibility that this may be my last sports column, I finally decided to write the column I've wanted to write this whole year.
I wrote about climbing the highest point in Rhode Island with my friend. I wrote about the greatest female barrel-racer to ever enter a rodeo. I wrote about the World Beard and Mustache Championships.
I wrote about my intramural soccer team. I wrote about the fastest 14-year-old girl in New England. Hell, I even wrote about my brother's high school marching band.
But I never wrote about tennis.
I thought that if I wrote a column about Venus and Serena Williams faking as many injuries as a Brazilian soccer player, I might be tempted to share some of my own memories of playing. And I didn't want to do that.
But I owe you an apology.
I visited Tufts during the fall of my senior year of high school. And just like at every other school I went to during that whirlwind Northeast road trip, I met with the tennis coaches - you and Coach Eng.
My dad and I sat in Coach Eng's office for over an hour, asking the same meaningless questions we asked half-a-dozen other coaches that week. Stuff like where the kids on the team were from and where the team goes for its spring trip.
We even walked around and looked at the indoor and outdoor courts.
I told you I wanted to play tennis for Tufts. I told you I could make your tennis team better. I told you my strengths and weaknesses, and how going to Tufts could make my game more complete.
So I ended up at Tufts the next fall.
Each day during orientation, I went out and practiced with the kids on the team. The first few days I couldn't hit the ball deeper than the service line because I had played at low altitude a total of zero times in my life.
I didn't know anybody on the team, and I didn't hang out with any of them after practice was over. I started to have less and less fun, and after a while, I just wanted to enjoy my first weeks at college rather than sweat them out on the court.
By the time the fall tournament came around, I hadn't practiced in over a week, but I played anyway. I breezed through the first round, and in the second round, I finally got to play the one kid on the team I was getting to know in a match.
Neither of us was in any kind of playing shape, but we both were out for blood. It was about eight billion degrees out there on that Parents' Weekend day, and it took every bit of my energy to gut out a close win. At that moment, I remembered how exciting and, yes, fun tennis and competing could be.
But I knew well before then that this was my last hurrah.
My dad is a teaching tennis professional, so I was raised more on forehands and backhands than on "Mr. Rogers" and "Sesame Street." I played a gajillion junior tournaments and four years of high school. But when I got home from playing, the tennis atmosphere was there too.
By the time I got to Tufts, I was burned out. And I knew it. And I didn't tell you.
So when I showed up to play my third-round match in that fall tournament, having not practiced since the previous round a week earlier, I just gave up.
I threw the match. It's the only time in my life I haven't put all my effort into something, and I think about it and regret it every day. And I haven't picked up a tennis racket since then.
I go home for breaks, and my dad asks me to go out and hit some with him. But for some reason, after all those years of kill drills and shoveling snow for hours just to get in a few minutes of serve practice, I just don't care anymore.
I didn't think I'd ever write this column until I saw Jon Bram in the library the other day, and he asked me if I still played at all. I just shook my head and wondered how I could ever accept giving up on the one thing that had dominated my life since I could bat around balloons as a four-year-old at the Denver Tennis Club.
You put your time and energy into me, and I gave you less than nothing in return.
So I'm sorry. It's just not there. And I owe it to you to tell you that.
Congratulations to all you graduates, and I hope you all can put your energy where your passion is.
