Sydney Smith: The People Around Me

Tennis is a very unique sport.

Everyone plays individually, yet you win or lose as a team. It looks deceptively easy when you watch it, but once a racquet is in your hand it gets incredibly harder to adjust to the small variations in speed, depth, direction, and spin that your opponent can place on the little yellow ball flying at you. And within the span of ten minutes you can go from playing the best tennis of your life to wanting to scream in frustration from not being able to hit a single shot where you want it to go. And, yes, I decided to put myself through that for four more years and to play at John Brown University.

If I am being completely honest, playing tennis at JBU was difficult in a lot of ways. From sophomore year on I played the one position, and it was definitely not easy taking on the best player from every single team each time I stepped on the court. I often felt disheartened as I seemingly took hit after hit, while making sure to keep my teammates encouraged, motivated, and hyped up even in the midst of both individual and team losses. So when looking back on what made me continue to play and even love the sport year after year, it all boiled down to being a result of the people around me.

My junior year, Michael Campbell stepped in as our new head coach, and with that transition came a huge culture shift on the team. It felt like tennis was finally being recognized as an official college sport, that the other women were serious about their games, and that we were truly able to form a family-like bond on and off the courts. That year, our record was absolutely terrible, yet I remember finishing the season so full of joy and hope and love because of the people around me.

We were able to lift each other up, laugh, and even cry together, and I attribute so much of that to Mike and the passion he poured into us. He showed us that while tennis may have been what brought us all together, we were first and foremost children of God that were capable of being incredible leaders to those around us and deserving of people’s time and recognition. It was no longer about just tennis but about the power of people instead.

Then my senior year, that tight-knit tennis family brought about what I thought was the impossible – we ended up having a record-breaking season. I no longer felt the weight of encouraging my teammates through constant losses because they were the ones that motivated me instead. I laughed more on those courts than I ever had before, even during the chaos of nursing school, and I was able to find a love for tennis that had often been missing. I truly feel so blessed by the people on that team, and I can quite honestly say that they became my family over the course of the past couple years. My coach and teammates taught me the power of persistence, the profound impact of prioritizing the people around me, and the value of mental strength in the midst of hardships on and off the court.

Looking back on it now, I absolutely cannot believe how far we have come as a team and how much I have grown in my four years at JBU. Being a Golden Eagle has truly transformed me as a person, and I would not exchange my time with the tennis team for anything. 

All I can say now is, “Lets go birds!”

Sydney, the 2022 Golden Eagle Champion of Character Award winner, will graduate this spring with a nursing degree. She plans on marrying Noah Frederick '21, moving to Dallas and beginning her career as an Intensive Care Unit nurse.