Balancing Books and Tennis: My Journey as a Year 10 Student-Athlete

Tennis is not just a sport, but it is my life. My name is Sina Izumi and I am a student of International School Suva who is also a rising student athlete. I have been a competitive tennis player since around the age of ten, but I officially started playing tennis at four years of age. Although I love tennis, there are many challenges that come along with something that you love and in this case that is the school aspect of being a student athlete.

Throughout Year 8 and the first term of Year 9, I didn’t have any trouble balancing academics and sports because I didn’t travel as often as I do now. From year 9 and onwards it slowly became challenging because I would go to many tournaments and miss a few weeks of school, which also meant that I would be missing the explanations being taught in class. I know there is a platform called Google Classroom where I can access all the work provided, but it’s hard doing the work when there is no one there to explain or answer your questions about the work. Then there would be situations where I travel to another country in the Pacific and stay in an area that does not have a good signal or I don’t have wifi access. I feel that these were the issues that I couldn’t fix during the moment, but definitely make up for it when I get back to school. Making up for the missing work during school can be stressful, but I care about my academics as well and it’s not something that I could just escape because I’m working for my future. There are also mental struggles when trying to keep up with school work whilst being in a tournament because I can not simply do my work at the courts. Doing my school work at the courts will not help me win because I have to process and study what I will do during my match and just simple homework could ruin the chain or motivation to want to win. There are situations where you are part of a team and cannot isolate yourself to do your school work at any time that you want, so that is another struggle for me as a student-athlete. Tennis matches can last from 2-5 hours and to balance a 5-hour match with trying to finish an assignment is exhausting because the only time I would get to do my work is at night and by the time the sky gets dark I’m exhausted from playing for so long that when I do my school work, I could be writing an essay with meaningless words from the exhaustion of my brain. 

Not only do I have struggles when I go to tournaments, but there can be challenges when I am at school and balancing my training with assignments. Being a student-athlete means that I need to balance my academic and sports life which can be tough at times. When I am not participating in tournaments I don’t struggle to do my homework and assignments because I have adapted to balancing my school work with training. When I am at school I focus on academics and when I am at training I focus on training and it’s just as simple as that. Going to training is important for me because it helps me restart when I get back to my work. Sometimes, I am stressed at school and going to training takes my mind off of school work so when I go back home I can process my thoughts much better than how I would if I had skipped training to study. However, sometimes when it is exam week, I cannot balance my studies with training as well as I usually would because my studies would just take over my mind at training and it makes it hard to concentrate at training. One thing that I do to improve this is to train less in the weeks because then I can do a brief training session and go back home to focus on my studies. Usually, I don’t feel like I struggle with trying to keep up because I have adapted to this pattern of training and going to tournaments during school terms and my teachers, family and friends support me, so there never seems to be a problem for me. 

I did not expect myself to fall in the direction of playing competitive tennis, but I honestly feel like I made the right decision to choose tennis as my sport. I know I became passionate about tennis when I loved playing, had fun and most of all stayed playing even when I lost many games in just the duration of a week. I had a decision to make between choosing tennis and swimming when I was around eight years old and I felt so passionate about tennis at that young age that I just had to choose tennis and I know I made the right decision. I started off with one coach who taught me the basics of tennis and she made me love the sport. From then on, I just kept on playing and when I turned ten years old, I started playing national competitions just for the experience of playing a match. The more I played, the more exposure I got and the more confidence I would get from these experiences. When I turned eleven years old, I was offered to represent the Fiji team in the Pacific Oceania Junior Championships and it motivated me to keep playing because at that time I didn’t think that I would make it that far in life to represent my country. I started training more often from then and I realised that this is the career that I want. To be honest, it wasn’t a whole adventure to figure out why I’m passionate about tennis, I just felt it in my heart that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. 

I participated in the Margaret Court Cup, West Pacific Regional Championships, Pacific Oceania Junior Championships, Suva Open, and Fiji Open throughout the year. These were great achievements even though I did not win most of them. I made friends along the way and reunited with my other friends. The most memorable moments for me were when I was able to identify when I improved and I felt good when I knew I was improving because that’s what I have been training for this whole time. I placed 2nd in the West Pacific Regional Championships. I had hoped to win gold but it was a tough mental match and I struggled with that, but I was able to establish that I needed to improve mentally to win. I placed 4th in the Pacific Oceania Junior Championships and again it wasn’t something I was expecting because, in this same competition for three years, I had been placing 8th and below, so it was a great achievement for me to go so far up, but I know that I could have done better. I did win the Suva Open which was a national tournament, but there were international players invited and many of them attended. All of these experiences are something I will never forget because each tournament shapes me into the person I am and motivates me to continue to the next competition. Still, the highlight of my year was the tournaments that I didn’t place in and this is an odd thing to say as an athlete but I do think those are the highlights of my years because I learned the most about myself and my skills within those tournaments. As an athlete, I think it is the greatest opportunity to reflect on yourself and be able to understand that you lose for a reason. 

Losing a tournament makes me feel bad but I am forever grateful for the support that I receive from everyone because they help me get through the thought of being a disappointment. My teachers, friends, family, coaches, and everyone has supported me in many ways that motivate me to keep going. My teachers understand that I have been away during their classes, but they always have something posted on Google Classroom and I am given extensions if I am not able to submit it in time. I appreciate this so much because it helps me to not panic about receiving a bad grade. My family is always supportive, they have invested so much into me and this sport that I feel motivated every time they watch me play or just do something for me means a lot because I know that I have a family that will always believe in me. My coach is amazing as well, I feel like he understands me so much because he knows how I should be hitting the ball or if I’m not doing something with the right technique he always makes sure to adapt it to how I can learn it fast and it always works. I just have such a great support system I don’t need to think twice when people ask me who I want to thank for my achievements. I know that I have a great support system, but there are also days when I am down and don’t feel great, but my coach is always there to cheer me up. Sometimes I even go to training with the worst feeling and it’s usually because I’m tired, but it’s not a feeling that stays for a long time because my coach and my parents are there to remind me that it’s going to be okay and for success you need to put in the hard work. 

Being a student-athlete means going through every emotion on most weeks because you have to try to balance everything in your life for the sake of good grades and good performance in sports and also keeping up socially and being active with your friends. Usually, during exam weeks, I am stressed and I feel like I cannot bear studying for a test right after training because I’m so drained, but once I overlook that, I know that it’s just all about perseverance. I learned so many lessons from stressful weeks because it brought me to understand that this is what I have to go through if I want to succeed. Most people who go through stress to become a student-athlete are devoted and I know this because everyone says that people who put in the hard work become successful and this is the beginning of the hard work that I need to go through to be a successful student and an aspiring athlete. Every competition I’ve lost, I went back and reflected on what I could do better for the next one, and reflecting doesn’t just make you do better in the next tournament automatically, you have to put in the work to make sure that the reflecting that you have done is achieved. 

I have mentally grown throughout the years because I went from wanting to give up after losing every tournament to becoming someone who does say that they ‘hate’ their sport but always goes back to it. After all, I know it makes me happy no matter how I feel about it in the negative moments. The experiences that I have explained so far are what shaped me to be a student and an athlete. I know that this is my life now and I have slowly adapted to it. 

I have a lot of goals in my life for tennis and academics but I feel like I have more goals in terms of tennis because I feel like I am more of an athlete than a student, but I still have to do school to have a future and get into university. For academics, my goals are to honestly pass all my classes and not procrastinate most of all. I procrastinate a lot throughout my years in ISS so far and I know this is not a factor that should be taken to years 11 and 12 because time management is important and if you don’t have it in your senior years, it can be difficult to manage especially because I am also a student-athlete. My goals for academics seem simple, but it is a goal that needs to be focused on and it’s a goal that’s been convincing me to pay a lot of attention in school. Tennis-wise, I have many goals for next year but the main goal is that I want to qualify for the Pacific Mini Games to represent Fiji in tennis, and an even bigger goal than that is to win a medal for my country. I like to work in sections with my goals because it breaks it down for me and doesn’t put so much pressure on me that I need to achieve this one goal with all these qualities at one time. Another important goal for me is to keep my mental health in check because tennis is a mental game and once you’ve lost mentally like you don’t think you’re going to win, that’s when you know you already lost the match and I tend to do that when I am playing against any overseas player because I feel like they have better facilities to work with when in really it’s not about that but it’s more about who wants to win the match most. A long-term goal that I have is to go to the Olympic games in the year 2028, in Los Angeles. Everything that I have been doing so far is to lead up to that day and I know it takes time and passion to get to the Olympics and that’s why I want to put in the hard work to get there. Going to the Olympics representing Fiji would also mean that I am the first woman playing tennis to represent Fiji and that’s also an accomplishment that I look forward to working for. 

The word student-athlete is the definition of someone with a lot of determination and strength but also someone with disappointments and I know this because I am one of the many student-athletes that feel this way. Even though I feel that I have weaknesses and disappointments, it’s not something I want to look down on myself for and it’s not something any student-athlete should feel about themselves. Success always comes when you have worked hard is what I have been saying throughout this blog and I’m saying it as a reminder for all the student-athletes that are tired of balancing school work alongside having to train on the day that you may have to study for an important test. It can get tiring, but the importance of pursuing both academic and athletic passions is what shapes you into the person you are today because it makes you a person who has many experiences and those experiences are what help you academically when you are struggling with your sport or vice versa. There have been tough situations where I don’t feel like training or studying and that’s a part of life, I can’t go back and change the situations that I’ve been through, but I can make sure that it’s not consistently occurring and that is a part of personal growth. For all the student-athletes, it’s important to know about self-growth because it makes you a better person, and being a better person is so important for the better of your sport, mental health, and education.