I Used to Be Great

I come from a family of athletes. My mom was a rhythmic gymnast. My dad rowed for the Soviet Olympic Team in the eighties. My brother rowed for UC San Diego, after an incredibly successful junior career.

I played tennis. My mom had me start taking lessons at the ripe age of six. Why tennis? Simple, she liked the outfits. She thought it was a sport fit for a woman, unlike my peers who played “masculine” basketball and soccer. I know this sounds incredibly sexist, but she was raised in the Soviet Union. It’s hard to undo years of cultural conditioning, though she tried.

I’ve always been very tall. By sixteen, I reached my full height of six feet, but it wasn’t through a dramatic growth spurt. I was just tall. Whether it was my height or genetically inherited athleticism, I was good at tennis. Really good. When I was seven, I played my first tournaments. I won the first, and the second, and the third. I was happy to get gold trophies with my name on them. My parents were happy that my name was in the county papers.

Parents and coaches saw my potential. When I was eight, my mom enrolled me in a tennis academy. Not the full-time ones with dorms, but an academy regardless. I practiced three hours a day, six days a week.

I played more and more tournaments, but they were no longer local. We drove around California and stayed in motels almost every weekend. I loved the tournament atmosphere. I liked to travel, I liked to compete, and more than anything, I liked to win. I made friends at tournaments, even though I would eventually play against every one of them. My parents reminded me not to get too close to any of them — they were my rivals, I shouldn’t get too close. We goofed off between matches and got yelled at by our parents for not conserving our precious energy.

At ten, my name was well-known in the world of NorCal junior tennis. I was ranked within the top ten players in the state, although I never made it to the top five. Hours of practices, cross training, and tournaments took a toll on my growing body. I had tendonitis in both my elbows, and plantar fasciitis in my left foot.

I began going to physical therapy once a week, indefinitely. At first, it was for my elbows and foot. Then, I hurt my rotator cuff. Later, my hamstrings. I had a new injury every couple of weeks. I knew my physical therapist better than I knew my teachers. Physical therapy became as normal as a weekly piano lesson.

In middle school, I didn’t have many friends. I couldn’t make it to birthday parties or play dates, since we were travelling almost every weekend. I had some friends in school, but I was never able to grow the friendships outside of school. All of my friends were in the tennis world, though they were also my competition.

It sounds like a cliche: one of those pushy parents, reluctant children situations. But it wasn’t. I really did love tennis. It was my world. I felt most at home at the academy. I did my homework there between practices. I ate lunch and dinner at their cafe. My coach and my closest friends were always readily available.

I continued to enjoy competing, too. I stopped caring as much about the trophies, and more about how well I played and who I beat. I was elated when I beat someone with a higher ranking, and disappointed when I lost to someone with a lower one.

By the time I was a teenager, I had too many injuries for the average thirteen-year-old. When my parents brought me to see new doctors, we brought a pack of my medical records, about half an inch thick and growing. The advice was always the same: more physical therapy, less practice. Have we tried swimming instead? Much easier on the body.

But injuries were just a part of sports, my dad would remind me. Look at him, or my brother. They were constantly injured at my age too (although, from what I put together, they suffered less injuries in their lifetimes combined than I did in the past seven years).

Still, it was my choice whether I wanted to play less. I was told to listen to my body. While I felt pain, I also felt fear. What would it be like to play at a lower level, or worse, have to take time off? Tennis was my home, my family. I didn’t know anything else. Who was I, if not an athlete?

By fifteen, the injuries were getting more severe and more frequent. I was re-injuring old injuries, going to physical therapy three times a week, and taking enough ibuprofen to hurt my young liver. My back had been hurting for months, and it wasn’t getting any better with therapy. My doctor referred us to a specialist: one who worked specifically with teenage athletes.

I was excited to miss school for all of my doctor’s appointments, until I realized how painful some of the tests and procedures were. I had x-rays, MRIs, electrotomyographies. The latter was the most painful. Small needles were inserted to various parts of my legs and back, and I was asked to contract that muscle. The needles hurt, but the muscle contraction sent a wave of pain through whichever nerve they were testing.

After countless x-rays, MRIs, and a few electromyographies, the doctor was ready to give a full diagnosis. He concluded that the reason my back hurt so much was because I damaged my sciatic nerve, in addition to micro-fracturing two joints in my back. Those would heal in time. The damage to my nerve, unfortunately, would be chronic. The more I played, the more I would aggravate the nerve. The doctor recommended taking some time off of tennis. My dad and I requested cortisone shots instead.

I layed on my stomach, pumped full of anesthetic, as the doctor inserted an eight-inch needle into my back. The medication (and pain, consequently) shot through my lower back and down my leg to my big toe — the full length of my sciatic nerve. We came back a month later, and they repeated the procedure.

Cortisone worked, temporarily. I could play for a couple of weeks before the pain would return. My parents and I were incredibly frustrated. We sought second opinions, but every doctor said the same thing: I couldn’t continue tennis at the level I was playing.

We didn’t listen. I played more tournaments, but I wasn’t winning anymore. I forfeited in almost every tournament that I played, once the pain got to be too much. After months of repeating that cycle, I was angry. Angry at my parents, angry at the doctors, angry at tennis, angry at my body.

We decided to take a strict six months off. No tennis, whatsoever. I went to more physical therapy and took Lyrica for the nerve pain. My weight stayed the same, but my muscle quickly turned into fat. By the time I came back, I had fallen behind. Six months was a long time in the tennis world. My ranking was now in the hundreds, instead of the top ten. The girls I used to play with weren’t playing the same tournaments; they moved on to national tournaments, traveling cross-country.

I still held out hope. Maybe with enough practice, I could get back to where I was. I could be great again.

I tried. I practiced and I played local tournaments at first, before moving on to state tournaments. My back was hurting, but I didn’t complain, terrified of taking more time off. By next year, recruiters would come see me play. I had to keep going.

I remember the tournament that made me quit. It was a practice tournament for me, before a more important one. It was held at a local high school. I had to forfeit halfway into the first set. I went out to my mom and my coach, passed them without saying a word, and waited at my mom’s car in the parking lot. I was angry, but more than anything, I was grieving. I was fifteen-years-old, and I knew my tennis career was over. I didn’t think about the positives: my weekends would be open, I could make more friends, get better grades, find a hobby. There were lots of possibilities, but I only saw one.

I wasn’t great anymore, and I was never going to be.