Head of School’s Notebook | Tennis

October 11, 2017

I was watching the Cate girls varsity tennis team thrash yet another opponent the other day when a member of the team sat down beside me and wrung her hands a bit about the lack of fan support.

“Generally,” she said, “We have three or four fans. You … and a couple of students.”

I couldn’t tell from her phrasing, actually, if I counted on the plus side or not, but I really enjoy watching our matches. And this team is exceptional, even by Cate standards. It is the only Cate team that competes in CIF Division I. Yes, that’s right. From an enrollment of approximately 140 girls, Cate fields a team that competes at the highest level in Southern California against schools whose enrollments are 20 times higher than ours.

And we aren’t there by accident. Two years as semi-finalists in the Division II CIF tournament meant our program was “too strong,” so we moved up this year. As of this writing, our girls have won all but a single match, having already taken down local powerhouse Santa Barbara High and a host of others. Maybe we’ll be this year’s “Cinderella story!”

But in some sense, it doesn’t really matter what happens from here. Yes, it would be nice (really nice) to run the table and win a CIF championship. It might be just as nice (even nicer, maybe) to have a whole raft of fans show up for a match or two. But what really matters is that these young women continue to compete; that they fight and scrap and work each day so that each new opponent knows that taking a set, let alone a match, away from Cate will take real effort.

And we trust our players will do that not simply so that they can continue to win – victory is really just an ancillary detail. Rather, so they understand the power of their own agency and the impact of their commitment. This is a critical lesson for all of our students, but particularly for our young women. The playing field of life is, sadly, still not level. But the tennis court is, and the inclination to compete at the highest level there surely means that the Cate players are unlikely to be daunted by the impediments the world might throw in front of them in the years ahead.

I remember hearing Malcolm Gladwell speak on this general topic not long ago, and he was quick to assert that success in anything has less to do with ability than it does with confidence and resolve. Well, this team has oodles of both, and the skills to match.

Just stop by the Bonning Tennis Center any day, and you’ll see what I mean.

Read the tennis team updates and find the varsity’s schedule here.