Masuk Free Press

As a female tennis player, I can confidently say that to most of the Masuk population, my sport is considered more of a hobby than an athletic competition. 

For whatever reason, sports that can also be played for leisure, like golf and tennis, are often left out of the conversation when it comes to discussion of sports.

People have commercialized the idea of the sport in their mind. When they think of tennis, they think of rich mothers in country clubs with a racket in one hand and a daiquiri in another. This stereotype leads people to question the validity of tennis’ title as a “sport,” and lends itself to the question, what truly defines a sport?

Tennis is a game of endurance, skill, speed and most importantly, a player that comes out on top at the end. It involves one player isolated on the court, their every move fully responsible for the outcome of the match. 

How is that any less of a sport than football? In the undeniably much slower game, football players find themselves with 11 teammates on the field to fall back on at any given moment, and talk strategy with during their lengthy 15 minute half time. 

If we are playing the comparison game, tennis is a higher stakes game. The biggest break you get during a match is the minute and a half between sets. 

Given that these facts are the case, why in the world are tennis and sports of a similar nature held with such a lower reverence than sports like football?

In America, and especially highschools, non-contact sports are immediately written off as hobbies. People are shocked to find that Masuk has a tennis team, and often make the off the bat assumption that the team is not competitive. 

Somewhere along the way we have lost the idea that real, exciting competition can occur without tackling and red cards from referees. Since tennis is not a team sport and lacks player to player contact, its acknowledgement is minimized. Athletes have to spend more and more time justifying that what they do is deserving of sport status. 

Tennis players, especially women, have to trip over themselves justifying their status as an athlete. We have to work to prove that the hours we spend on positioning and technique are just as much work as the football players put into pushing dummies across a grass field and hopping through tires. 

This is a product of the lack of awareness surrounding these sports. At Masuk, during Principal Swenson’s weekly phone calls or morning announcements, they are quick to share updates on the football and basketball teams. The whole Masuk population hears about these teams’ wins and losses, highlights on players and information on when the next game is. It is very rare to hear updates on how the tennis or golf teams are doing, regardless of whether they are having a better statistical season and making it farther than the more publicized teams did.

The lack of vested interest in the tennis team is clear in the amenities, or lack thereof, that the team received throughout the season. During the 2022 season, the team did not have uniforms and had to spend an extra 50 dollars out of pocket for Nike tops. And do not be fooled, we still have to “pay to play” the athletic department at the beginning of every season. 

The tennis team also struggles with a lack of equipment. We do not have enough scorecards to go around, so during home matches some players have to go without. This not only complicates the game, but is also technically against regulation. 

Not having the proper equipment is only an extra burden on top of the way that the team has to travel off site to practice and host home matches. The tennis team has to travel to Wolfe Park to practice. We have a 10 minute window to gather all of our gear and get changed to hop on the bus to practice. In theory, that does not sound all that bad, but that is only when the bus actually comes. On many separate occasions, the girls tennis team has been left standing in front of the school waiting for a bus that is not coming.

The bus issue has been a long struggle for the girls tennis team. During the 2022 season, we often did not have a bus at all, and had to procure our own rides to matches. This proved to be a huge issue, as students and parents would have to spare gas and drop whatever they were doing to make sure that the team members get to their 3:30 match. 

When tennis parents complained, they were met with claims of a district wide bussing issue. While this is true, it seems as though teams such as golf or tennis were the ones shouldering the most weight in this issue. 

The simple truth is that the tennis team, and teams of its nature, are low on the priority list of the school. Unless a lot of people have a serious change of heart about women’s sports and sports regarded as “rich person hobbies,” this will not change anytime soon. Still, if anyone with any semblance of control over the school announcements is reading, next time, maybe it would be fun to highlight the accomplishments of one of Masuk’s lesser known teams.