Student Voice Series: My Fantastic Tennis Tournament by Fatima (Year 7)
Last week, I excitedly went on a road trip with my parents to participate in the Asian Series test tournament which was located in Riyadh, Saudi. The road trip took around five hours to get from Bahrain to Saudi (Riyadh). As soon as I arrived, my parents and I stayed at a hotel which was close to the tournament itself.
The next day, I went to the place where the tournament was held to practise playing tennis and to get used to the courts. To my surprise, the courts were actually purple and blue rather than green and red. I practised against a boy who was ranked in the 50s for under 14 boys. He was competitive and I really enjoyed playing against him.
The day after, I began to practise against a girl named Polina, who was from Kazakhstan. She was ranked 8th in the tournament, which meant that she was very good. I also practised with a girl from India who was ranked 1st in the tournament too!
However, my match was scheduled the day after. My opponent this time was a girl from Kazakhstan named Arujan. I lost 1-6, but then I made an epic comeback of 5-7. In my opinion, I think I could’ve won, but I was too anxious before the match which made me lose focus.
Although I lost my first match, I had a doubles match that occurred the next day. My doubles partner was a girl from Thailand named Krissana. However, on the day we had a doubles match, it began to rain heavily, so they delayed every match by an hour or two. But, once our match started, we had to wait for our opponents to arrive. Our opponents eventually showed up, but it began to rain so our match was suspended until the next day.
Over the next few days, it was raining heavily with thunder and lightning. But, I had a match the day it finally became sunny. I didn’t get to play because my opponent didn’t show up, so that’s when I came back to Bahrain.
Overall, I really enjoyed this experience and I hope to come across more opportunities like this, in or out of school. Even though I barely won any matches, this tournament, to me, was for the experience and enjoying myself. I see it as a stairway to progressing into something greater.
