Wow. That was a long and eventful summer. 11 weeks. Now that look back at my summer, I would say that this year's summer was all about discovery and rediscovery. My summer was broken up in about 3 sections. Tennis, Church and Colleges. Each of these sections played a key part in my summer.
Tennis
During my 11 weeks of summer, I spent a lot of time playing and coaching tennis as well as working at a tennis tournament. As a full time coach this year, I earned approximately 12 $/hr working about 14 hours a week. I learned a lot from my from coaching tennis, mainly how to interact with kids, how to motivate them to play or to work. I really enjoyed working with my fellow coaches as well as Barbara, Claire and Alita. Not only did I coach, I also played tennis as well. I was part of the High School Clinic that went on Mondays and Thursdays from 4:30 to 6. I learned a lot this summer from Jerry, Claire and Mark. (Side note, I was glad that I met Jerry this year) I also made some really good friends during the clinic. I played some matches, except all of them were against kids that were 13-15 years old, which was extremely sad. On top of coaching and playing, on the first week of August, I worked with a group of people to help run our annual tennis tournament at MCC. I was the de facto leader of the group, and we accomplished a lot of things during the 13 hours a day work for a week.
In the mornings, we would arrive at MCC at around 8:30-8:45 to begin set up. We would first wipe down the cars, put up scorecards and singles sticks. After which we would just wait and hang out until people started playing matches. Before matches, we would help the players by bringing their balls and name cards down to the court. Then during the day, we would clean up courts, clear courts, help set-up things, do miscellaneous jobs. At the end, we would clean up and return home at around 8-9. That went on for about 4 days, until the finale on Sunday.
Sunday was the big finale with all the finals matching. Most of the helpers as well as a separate group of ballkids would ballkid the matches. This year's team was trained by myself, and Barbara. This year, our group was really good, and the kids worked really hard. I was so proud of them after the whole tournament.
During the summer, I also had the chance to go the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford. We were lucky enough to watch players such as Pete Sampras, Michael Chang, Jelena Jankovic, Serena Williams, Marion Bartoli, and a few others. I took plenty of pictures which was fun.
Church
This summer, I decided to go back to the Contra Costa Gospel Church, in Walnut Creek to check out the Youth. To my surprise, I had a lot of fun and met a lot of fun people. These people would become my really good friends over the summer. When I first went back to the church, I was immediately invited to a bonding event where we went to Great America. Realizing that I would have tons of fun at this church and with this youth group, I began to attend the church as well as their youth fellowships on Saturday nights. Some of the things they did such as the games, became additions to Paradyme's games and such. Some of the people I met that would be really good friends were Chris Wang, Joby Zhang, Rachel Hua, Bob Zhou, Everett Tsang, Matt and Melvin Lai, and so many others. For some reason, that church reminded me of Paradyme back at home.
Colleges
This summer, in preparation for my college applications, we visited Santa Clara University, Claremont McKenna College and Occidental College. I really enjoyed my visits their because I learned a lot more about there school than I did online. While we visited Occidental and Claremont, I had the chance to have an interview at Occidental which I believed help solidify my decision to apply there.
Yeah, I know this is really late which is why I didn't write as much for the latter two paragraphs. Sigh, Senior year is stressful.
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