Peaking Early

I think I peaked athletically when I was about 10. Conveniently, I peaked at an age when athletic ability didn’t threaten to burden me with millions of dollars, or a free education, or the adoration of the opposite sex.

I was 10 when I won the Futures Junior Tennis Tournament in Atlanta. I beat Robby Ginepri in the finals. Ten or so years later, Robby was playing Andre Agassi in the semi-finals of the U.S. Open. I was playing PlayStation with my roommate [name redacted]. Did Robby’s loss to me in the Futures drive his success? Hard to say. But, no. It didn’t. He beat me soundly when we were 11, 12, 13, etc.

I was also 10 when I hit a walk-off grand slam to win a little league baseball game. The asterisk to that story is that the ball barely left the infield and the play would properly be scored as a single followed by three errors. Asterisks can be real buzzkills.

By eighth or ninth grade, I backed away from competitive tennis. I thought my girlfriend would probably dump me if I was out of town the whole summer. She dumped me after I spent the summer in town.

I wrestled in eighth grade. I was in the 103 pound weight class. I quit after a year, worried that the next year there wouldn’t be any other wrestlers in that weight class and, until I could put on some muscle, the coach would make me perform ribbon dance routines in between the wrestling matches.

In high school, I made it rain in the YMCA and church basketball leagues, but I was never good enough to make the teams you had to try out for.

Senior year of high school, my friend [name redacted] and I decided to join the diving team. There was a pretty girl on the diving team who I’d been dating for several months and there’s nothing that can solidify high school love like a Speedo. [Name redacted] quit the diving team after the first practice. Turns out, he was incapable of entering the water head first, which likely wouldn’t have helped his scores. I stuck it out as the sole male diver. What I lacked in ability, I also lacked in grace. The pretty girl? She’s now my wife. Thank you, Speedo.

In college, I played rugby for one day. I don’t need to explain why that was a bad idea.

I think it’s time to write some new glory days into my story. One day, when I’m playing shuffleboard at the senior center, the guys and I will swap embellished stories about our athletic pasts. Hopefully I’ll tell about the time I blazed a 5k when I was pushing 40. Beating a ten-year-old in tennis can only take you so far.