Cakeball Tennis
The school tennis team had become intoxicating. In fact, it was so intoxicating that even calling is a "team" seems generous. Quittng was still hard, though, mainly because I adored tennis itself. I loved the endorphins, the gameplay, the strategy involved, and I loved the feeling of swinging at the ball and hitting it perfectly to get a great shot. So although I couldn't stand the "team", leaving was bittersweet. I never regretted my decision, but as soon as I left, I could feel the difference. On one hand, it felt amazing to not have to deal with those people anymore. I genuinely felt lighter, happier, and less irritated with people in general. But on the other hand, I missed the "rush" I got from playing every day. I had to admit that having 40 minutes during school each day to relax from academics/blow off some steam/socialize/get my blood circulating was pretty great. And when I started junior year, I noticed that I was much more mentally drained after each school day. So while I never looked back on that "team", it wasn't an ideal situation. Luckily, I was determined to keep tennis in my life. I made sure to keep it a part of my days in whatever ways I could - whether that be by asking my few friends on the "team" to play on the weekends or introducing new people to the sport so we could play after school. I even got my parents into it - yes, I was THAT desperate to not leave my beloved sport behind.
For a few months, there was one friend I would play with pretty consistently. We'll call her Jaya. Jaya and I would meet at these two little courts by our local library and play for and hour here or there when we had time during the busy school year. I really loved playing with Jaya, but not having more people to develop my skills with did make it harder to improve. Now, one thing you should know about Jaya is that she has a LOT of ideas that she wants to test out. And one of these lovely brainchildren happened to be starting a tennis club. At first I sort of didn't believe she really wanted to follow through with it, so I just kind of smiled and played along. But she started asking me to invite tennis players I knew to our two little courts. I figured it couldn't hurt, so I called a few of my friends and we would play when we had time. Slowly, the group started group grow from three or four to five or six, and we outgrew our two little courts and had to move to the newly renovated middle school courts nearby. As we raised our numbers, the differences started to be noticable. We would train hard and socialize harder. I watched my tennis abilities improve faster than they had in a long while. Physically, I became more musculur and developed a tan. One day, I had the brilliant idea to bring leftover cake from a party my family had recently had, and what do you know? Cakeball Tennis Club was born.
Our little ragtag group of ameteur tennis players became legit overnight. We even made a group message thread - that's when you know you're the real deal. Over the school year, we could only meet about 3 times a month, as one might expect from a group of motivated, high achieving high school kids. But now it's summer. We meet twice a week, and over the months we've become better in so many ways. We've become better athletes, better frineds, and better club members. We bring cakes and cookies and fruits and anything else we can think of. We try new warm ups and drills and games. We do matches, but never get caught up in the competition. We play music and laugh and goof around and enjoy life. But we don't ever, ever stress. This club, I've realized, has become so important to me. It's something I can look forward to during the boring summer days. It's a place for me to get that endorphine rush I always loved in a safe, warm, motivating environment. Cakeball has been so good for my mental health, and, in some ways, it's kept me sane. See, life gets intense; cakeball doesn't.
So, I suppose the moral of this story is to
Ditch toxic environments
Create welcoming environments
Do that, and I think your life could get
so
much
better.