Thaaj Bhardwaj '24 Recruiting Profile

I picked up tennis in 7th grade because I needed a second sport during middle school. Turns out I loved it more than my main sport of soccer and worked extremely hard to accomplish a new goal of making the Varsity Tennis team during my freshman year of high school and to play in the top 6. Hearing my name called when the coach was announcing the names of the 5 players taken gave me one of the greatest feelings of achievement I have ever experienced up until that point. I made sure to not stagnate though and keep working to push to the next goal, playing in college. As I made my way into the top 3 in the team, I played number 1 doubles during my junior year. However, I finally faced my point of failure after losing in the District tournament final gaining second place and losing the predicted 1 seed in the Individual State tournament. But, I didn't let that failure beat me, I used it to create more motivation to work even harder for Individual State, and when facing the opponent that beat me in the District Final again in the State Final, my drive was larger than theirs and that gained my first title as the Individual Doubles State Champion of district 5A. I learned one of the biggest lessons from tennis, that the achievement felt from hard work is one of the best feelings you can ever have. I always apply to this lesson to everything I do now, keeping my GPA of a 4.0 or higher and putting in the maximum effort and competitive spirit I possess into everything, but I also learned to not be scared of failure, because failure will help me grow and learn to be forged into a new and improved athlete, and student.