Wheels.

Life on the field.

I am thankful to Venus Williams. It is because of her that my parents got me started in tennis first. Because if I was going to be the next Venus Williams, starting at five years old was paramount. It also got me out of the house and around other kids which was likely the main goal.

The thing about tennis is that it is a largely solo endeavor. It’s very easy to witness your own personal progress. It’s easy to drill on your own. And when it comes to singles matches, if you win, that is all you. But if you lose, that is all you too. Unlike most field sports, tennis doesn’t happen on a timer either. You need to see the match through. Carry yourself with dignity sometimes until a quite bitter end. It’s through tennis that I learned how to both win and lose gracefully with all eyes on me and on my opponent. 

Due to the nature of tennis, I still remained a quiet child outside the house. I always had friends but the way I played struck a lot of my teachers as odd. I’d often spend recess sitting in the supply closet shifting paperclips around and playing out epic battles between mythical creatures in my mind. So that was the driving motivation behind my parents introducing me to team sports. 

It was very easy to transfer my determination in tennis to determination in soccer. By this point, it was clear I was a competitive person. I played left midfield with the idea being that if I was left-handed then I’d be left-footed too. I suppose that was right. Really I was comfortable with both feet. And while I wasn’t the most aggressive person on goal, I was very good at assists. And I was good at regaining possession mostly because I never encountered anyone in the middle school club leagues who was faster than me. 

“WHEELS, ANNA! WHEELS!” my coach would yell from the sidelines. And no matter how tired I was, turning up the gas even when it felt like I had nothing left in the tank would usually be enough to get me where I needed to be, flying down the sideline before hammering a cross over to the forwards. It’s after one such run on a day hotter than hell that our team won the big trophy. First place. They called me a machine. A monster. And it gave me a lot of pride to be put out on the field and consistently get the job done. It felt even better when you’d find that perfect synergy with your teammates. 

Neither of my parents really knew what lacrosse was when I first started. They just knew that it was a popular sport amongst the Northeast private school crowd of which I was a part. It combined the agility of soccer with the precision muscles of tennis. When I started at age thirteen, the field was still under “natural boundaries” rules. That meant that while there were marked sidelines, the end boundary would be the first big obstacle you’d run into. That was often a parking lot, a hill, or a treeline. So if that ball missed the goal you’d be hustling against the other team to get that recovery all the way to the front bumpers of all those parked minivans sometimes a good fifty feet away. I liked the natural boundary rule, but when it was taken away and replaced with real end lines,  it just made speed all that more important. 

During my college years playing lacrosse against the West Point Military Academy in particular, I became accustomed to the woman who would always walk up next to me on the field. We were always the only two black players and our battles for the ball deep in the corner never quite crossing over the boundary line would get downright vicious. Once you’re hunkered down over there, speed loses importance and it becomes more of a wrestling match, figuring out how to maneuver your body and your stick to get that tiny ball in the net then take off before it can be knocked back out turning into another free ball. But each time at the final whistle we’d look at each other, grin, and shake hands. During my sophomore season, her coach even came up to me asking if I was interested in transferring. I was very shocked by the extent he seemed to be dead serious so I just said, “Respect, but I’m not interested in joining the army.” 

I hope she’s doing alright. At this point, her mandatory military service should be over. 

I know a lot of people scoff at the idea of athletics. In school, it’s often associated with a lack of intelligence. It is seen as silly to cheer a team on and unnecessary to spend all that energy trying to win because it’s “just a game.” But for me, sports gave me a good foundation for discovering inner strength, learning to work with others, experiencing a concrete sense of achievement, and forming relationships with women and girls that were based on the desire to continuously improve ourselves and how we worked together rather than to achieve sameness and never rock the boat. 

Leaving it all out on the field was cathartic, very similar to how I feel nowadays when I’ve pulled off the production of a complicated show. If I’m ever exhausted and feel like I can’t take another step, I’ve got a voice in the back of my head screaming “WHEELS” and suddenly I find that the goal is within reach.