Shallow Thoughts
Living in sport-crazy Texas, I've heard horror stories about how loud/obnoxious/mean the parents on the sidelines can become when they are "cheering on" their children. Like the adults to take team building competition too seriously, the adults who try to live vicariously through their children's athletic endeavors end up ruining everything for everyone.
With that in mind, I'm very happy that my daughter has chosen tennis as her sport, and that there is a lot of strict fan etiquette in tennis. The players are not allowed to receive any "coaching" at all from anyone during a game, and excessive cheering/clapping is discouraged. I attended a youth tournament today and even though 15-20 matches were running at all times, it was a wonderfully serene environment.
Deep Thoughts
My 7-year-old made her tennis tournament debut today:
She lost her first match (4-0, 4-0) to an older and more experienced player who would eventually go on to the finals in the main bracket. Lesson learned: it's important to recover back to ready position after every hit, you can't just stand there and stare at your opponent in awe ;-P
In the consolation bracket, she won her first match (4-1, 4-2) to a player with similar experience. Lesson learned: even if an opponent is physically weaker, it can be very exhausting to chase down a bunch of floaters and drop shots.
She then lost the second match in the consolation bracket (4-1, 4-0), again to an older player with more experience. It was the best match of the day for her though, with lots of good volleys. Lesson learned: double faults kill ;)
The scores/results were unimportant - now she knows exactly what a "tournament" will be like and won't have the same apprehension when the next one comes around. And hopefully that resilience transfers to the other challenging endeavors that she will inevitably face in life.
Bonus Thoughts
March 3rd is Hinamatsuri, the Girls' Day celebration in Japan. Normally we would have set up our doll display and enjoyed some chirashizushi, but we were just too busy with everything else going on this week. Hopefully next year's Hinamatsuri won't feel like a such a runaround.
Daily Stats
Cash: 13.0%
Core: 74.3%
Explore: 12.7%
Workout: 25 min Dog Walk + 45 min tennis warmups
Alcohol: Sam Adams Coffee Black
Sleep: 11pm to 7:30am, broken
684|53