Recoaching my 18-year-old self.

In 2003, I vocalized the desire to make it to state for my high school tennis team. I was shy about it, one of my teammates was the one who shared it with the new coach initially. I’m so thankful she did! Playing #1 singles can be a really tough position, it's the best players of each team and many play year-round (which is what I did at the time). I worked hard, played hard and if I’m being honest was also very hard on myself. Without going through more details of the season, I don’t have many memories of the season anyway, I made it to state! I was so excited AND also terrified. Though I’d played high stakes matches through tournaments outside of the school season, those weren’t state. And somehow that mattered. 

Banner of the CHSAA state championship tournament.

In 2025, 22 years after my match at state, I came back to tennis. I started by going to some adult drill nights (SO FUN) and I played at a few adult meet ups at the local park (also SO FUN). A few years back, one of my nephews was playing and I felt reinvigorated to come back to the sport and more specifically to come back as a coach. 

When I played my state match, I was terrified. I see it in my face looking back at pictures. I was tight, stressed and nervous. And perhaps that is how I often played, though I was good at tennis, I have often wondered whether I actually had fun playing. I remember my dad telling me that the girl I played wasn’t ranked with USTA, unlike many other girls in the tournament. I remember the girl would float the ball back to me and didn’t miss any shots. I remember always wanting to hit winners and end the point. I couldn't seem to play my own game, to play at my level. 

A picture of the author playing tennis at the state tournament in 2003.

Another thing I have such a clear memory of is my coach coming to the fence and telling me ‘you’ve already lost this match, you’ve already checked out’. It was true. And unfortunately, I had no idea how to change that mindset. If my coach tried to reframe with me, I don’t remember it. I remember feeling defeated, alone, embarrassed and so upset. I’d made it to state and this was how my high school tennis career would end? 

I was talking with my chiropractor early in the fall this year. She had recently become a cheer coach for a local high school. I mentioned I’d been considering coaching myself and her response ‘OMG do it girl!’. Not long after this, I was at one of the adult meet ups for tennis and just happened to play with someone who is a tennis coach at a local high school. I used my voice and asked whether there was a need for another coach. Within a few days I was in touch with the head coach and filling out the application! 

What I needed from my high school coach wasn’t tough love. It was mental strength. I needed to learn how to coach myself through a negative narrative. I needed an expansive mindset, a strengths based approach. I needed to know how to point out what was going well in my matches. I needed to know that, this is a clique I know, that winning isn’t the end all be all. It is something out of control. What I can control is my mindset. 

The author talking to her coach at the state tennis tournament in 2003.

Many are familiar with ‘reparenting’. The idea that as an adult, you can be the parent you didn’t have for yourself. And this isn’t to say all our parents were/are bad. It is to acknowledge that parents are humans. They can’t possibly know all our needs AND meet them in the exact way we need them to be met. Recoaching is the same. Coaches are human. Like parents, they do the best they can. And we can fill in the gaps as we grow, learn and develop. Coaching has been this incredible opportunity to be the coach I needed at that state tournament 22 years ago. Coaching has allowed me to be the coach for kids now to point out what is going well, what they are working on and to not just call out the mindset but to provide avenues to shift the mindset. That is really profound. 

It isn’t just that coaching for the first season with the local high school boys team was profound. It was another insight I had shortly after the season started. So much of the work I’ve engaged in as an adult has centered around mindset. Working as a parole officer I would hear clients express their deeply held attitudes, values and beliefs through their day to day language. I would learn how to use cognitive behavioral practices to bring attention to how our thoughts and feelings lead us to act and from our actions, there are consequences: positive and negative. In my yoga training’s, I would learn about how yoga is practiced for the mind, that by moving the body in intentional ways, the mind would find more balance. It was in complex yoga poses that I would hear the defeatist talk still within, that I would talk myself out of even trying a pose because, like high school me, I would have already concluded it was over before even allowing my body to try. It is as though that state tennis match laid the groundwork for me to shift long standing patterns of negative self talk for me and for all others I work with. It is as if tennis, or any such activities, offer a profound opportunity for all of us to challenge our minds in ways that engender much expansion and growth. 

Having shared all of this, I have to say that the 18-year-old me  is really so proud of current day me. Being the coach, I needed for myself and bringing this wisdom of the importance of mindset to kids now is really such a gift.