Receiving a scholarship to go to the best tennis camp and academy in the state of Texas should be the most exciting thing in a young tennis players’ career. A tennis official at a tournament I won this summer decided to write a really nice report about my good behavior on the court; therefore, I won a tennis scholarship most kids would only dream of. I’ll admit, I was extremely excited when I received the letter in the mail telling me that I could attend the John Newcombe Tennis Ranch at no charge for a whole week. That all changed after the first day of the camp.

My parents decided to let my little sister tag along and paid for her camp experience. My sister and I stalked the John Newcombe Tennis Ranch website, looked up YouTube videos about the camp and dreamed about the tennis friends we would soon meet.

The day we arrived at camp, our “vacation” was already off to a rough start. My sister had wanted to stay in a cabin with kids her age, but also wanted to room with me. I was told we would bunk with girls my age, so I assumed that meant rooming with other 15 year olds. To my surprise, when we walked into our cabin, there was a bunch of 13-year-old girls “fan girling” over some new camp counselor.

After requesting to switch cabins, my sister and I gathered up all of our belongings and made our way to a cabin full of girls my sisters’ age. Upon entering the cabin, all of the screaming 11-year-old girls suddenly got quiet. Brecklyn was welcomed into the cabin with open arms. After speaking with my sister, about seven little girls started questioning me. “Why aren’t you with girls your own age?”, “Is Brecklyn your little sister?” and “How old are you? DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND?” After answering the variety of questions, I was accepted into my little 11-year-old family for the week. It was actually really nice to room with a bunch of children. They all looked up to me and thought I was extremely cool, and every night I was the first person to take a shower.

The reason I was really at camp was to learn more about tennis. The first day we were placed into groups based on our ability and rankings in the state. After our morning session of training and weight lifting, the camp counselors offered to take us to get ice cream. My group, “Top Gun,” piled into hot and uncomfortable white vans and made our way to get our “ice cream.” Being a newcomer at camp, I had no idea that we really weren’t going to get ice cream. We were heading to our horrible deaths, also known as running up “Ice Cream Hill.” The experience almost left me in tears, and I wanted to leave camp by the end of the first day.

The rest of the week went by pretty fast, and I made some really cool friends. My overall experience wasn’t all that bad. After camp, my dad took my sister and me to Schlitterbahn, which made the whole week of nonstop tennis worthwhile. I learned a lot from camp and, looking back, I had more fun than I realized and  wouldn’t exchange that week of tennis for anything.