By: Andrew Cheng

After I made the High School tennis team, my whole brain just came to a stop. I felt delighted because I didn’t expect to make the high school varsity team as a freshman. Being satisfied wasn’t good enough, though, since I wasn’t playing as competitively as I was at the beginning of the tryout. In the end, I was placed as a bench player for the team. I wasn’t upset then, but by the end of the season, I had changed my mind.

As a bench player, I didn’t expect to play a game against another school. But in fact, I played my first ever match of the season. I felt incredibly nervous and began playing poorly. I hadn’t played too competitively after I made the team. I keep missing every shot I hit. It was also a doubles match, meaning I had brought my partner down. These failures made me feel even more frustrated. My mentality caused me to lose two sets consecutively. After the match, I felt no satisfaction left. I began to focus on playing competitively again, and it did help with getting back my mode of the game.

However, a stand-out player is always better than everyone else at school. This makes our singles players have some horrible time. He gets destroyed by all the players from other schools, ending up with a broken mentality and losing his passion for the sport. My final goal is to become the No.1 in my school, but I realized it would require more training and durability to win the game.

Great job! I made note of a few areas that could benefit from some revisions in order to clarify the point you are trying to make in your short story.