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Hot Grill ep10. Coven Brunch Award Speech!?!
Main Plot Starts Here
This is the unreleased version I wrote the day after NYU. I wrote it in Double Tree Hilton Honors, after debugging my Rust proxy.
This one is raw and more full of shit. You're a real one if you could make it to the end!
Speech
Woah, what a long list of award nominations beforehand! I love seeing my peers go up here and claim the honors that they well deserve. It’s like this every year, and suddenly it’s my fourth year. But we made it! I made it without glamour. I made it to my last banquet, and have somehow never claimed any of those awards. But you know what, being a nice, protocol-following audience is an achievement on its own. Flowers don’t stand out without leaves, and those awards probably won’t shine as much without me, a soon-becoming NARP (Non Athletic Regular Person), clapping until my palms hurt. So here, shout out to the outstanding athletes who worked their ass off and got those titles. You guys totally killed it! Remember to give the camera a good smile for your group photo later. And shout out to the Hiiiizwd others, who worked just as hard, showing up every day, although without an immediate positive reinforcement, in the form of a trophy. A friend of mine once told me, half of your life is just showing up. I say bump it up to 90%. 90% of your life is showing up. You can only show off after you show up. You show up, and then you show off.
So the question is, why am I showing up here? Neither have I won any All-Americans, nor have I delivered major contributions to the university or society. I am literally just, so normal. The most abnormal thing I have won is the UAA honorable mention award, and the Dean’s List, probably. But I believe, no objections allowed here, that, is what made me stand out, and in fact, that’s what makes all of you stand out. The only reason that some of you are not here, is that you did not send our Athletic Department lead Andrew and Jess a goofy email to self-nominate as a speaker. Despite your position in the lineup, your number of winners, your winning rate, your whatever metrics are for your sport, you, me, we are all student athletes. We all do something with such discipline, effort, and self-imposed obligations, that is much more intense than a part-time job. Now you might laugh or chuckle, but if you think about it, you wake up, get mentally ready for practice at some ungodly hours, go through those ungodly hours, shower, scroll some reels to post-lock in… How much time does that take for a day? What about a week? A month? I’ve never thought about it before senior year, because I love tennis so much. So much that I am willing to give my everything. I didn’t know the number of hours I spend on a court per week because I didn’t count them. I never counted.
But I started counting the hours in my senior year. Tennis, like all of my failed relationships, broke my heart in a way that is only more intense and brutal. After three years of constant mental battle and physical torture, I realized that I am just — not that good as I thought. I couldn’t play in top positions in the lineup, and I couldn’t beat players from top 10 teams. In my first year, my goal is to be the NCAA women's singles champion. In my second year, my goal is to maybe be considered for entering the NCAAs. In my third year, my goal is to stay on the lineup. In my last year, my goal is to stay on the team. It frustrates me so much to take years to realize that my perspective was so narrow, I was so cocky, and I had so many expectations that only went against my way. I trained so much, flew through the Pacific, to become a meh player in DIII tennis. So if not the best, why bother? Now coach Pauri you are probably raising eyebrows as you are listening to this, but I really need to let it out. After a crappy season after my junior year, I just can’t. For the first time in my life, I voluntarily took a 2-month break without any tennis. Instead of tennis, I just went to raves, and it felt good. Back to the start of my senior year, never had anyone told me, and I question, why didn’t anyone tell me, the door to an adult life in a foreign country is so damn scary? Career, grad school, graduation requirements, emotional breakdowns at 3am… They all hit me at the same time and caught me off guard. My body is breaking down due to constant stress and insomnia, and I have never taken this much sick leave. I thought I was about to break up with tennis. I really did.
Now is probably the time to talk about some magical epiphany that elevates this speech to a higher level. But there was just … none. Truth is, in the second half of the semester, I didn’t drop the team initially because I just wanna go to bed. Honestly, I was having so much stress-induced insomnia, only varsity level exercise can wear me down enough to pass out at a reasonable hour. I managed to pull through the first week of the season, and then the second week, and then third, fourth, fifth, …, eighth… Before I noticed, it was senior day. And as I blinked again, UAA was over. The season is over. My student-athlete career is officially over. Never will I ever play tennis again with such discipline, effort, and self-imposed obligations, that is much more intense than a part-time job.
People always say that you can’t solve the puzzle when you are inside the puzzle. You possibly will not win if you are constantly thinking about winning. Process-oriented mindset, anyone? For me, I could never view college tennis for what it truly is when I was carrying so much self-imposed pressure and sentiment – I shouldn’t let my teammate down, I can’t lose to this school, why does the coach ask us to spend time with the tenth recruit of the season, why does Gosman have a new swipe entrance, bleh bleh bleh. As I was just flowing with the air for the past three months, I realized that in my lonely senior year, tennis was the one thing that lifted me up. It was always there, no matter how I viewed it or treated it. It lifted me up, giving me a sense of purpose as I first started out my college life. It lifted me up again, putting me together as I frequently panic and spiral in my last year of college. 3 weeks ago I had a dream in which I was hitting a serve with a toothbrush. That was when I realized one thing: no matter how grumpy I was with this sport, no matter how many matches I had lost, and how much I had cursed, I have always loved tennis. Tennis has taught me to love something so much that I keep loving it even when it stops loving me, and that, my friends, is some discipline. When enthusiasm and romance died with time, can you still finish what you started? Some might call it sunk cost, but I call it grit. It can carry people a long way.
I know I said a lot of generic things about tennis. I realized that the word means differently at a collegiate sport. When I say tennis, I mean my tennis team, my teammates and my coach. When I said tennis lifted me up, I was referring to the small talks in the locker room. Can somebody push the bin? Does anyone have an extra pair of spandex? The team meals on the van, the most random bickering at the most random places, the cheerings with layers of echoes across the indoor facility. I only realized that the experience is not so much about winning or losing. I mean, it matters, but now, after more than 80 matches I have played through, my most iconic memories are not really the beautiful shots I have played. Maybe Pauri remembers that. He always does. Pauri, you always say that you will keep repeating things until we do them, such as being loud for each other on court. You were so frustrated when we lost against Wesleyan in 2024. You said you are upset not because we lost. It’s because we just all look super down and …. no one is cheering; no one is looking out for their teammates who are still playing… The team was just, kind of dead. You also mentioned so much about team culture, how after years, all we are going to remember .. is gonna be those team lunches and dinners, with the 13 dollar team budget. I didn’t get it then, but I get it now. I really do.
We definitely need more than 13 dollars.
I remember my teammates screaming and sprinting to me faster than all the 200s that we have run, as I clinched against NYU in the summer of 2024. I remember my teammates holding me against their shoulders as I accidentally cried after senior day. I remember laughing until my abs hurt on the van, and speaking of those long, bumpy van rides, oh, my, god. It was all those memories that lifted me up. All those memories, put together because we all play tennis, and I am absolutely in love with every single bit of it.
Seniors in this hall. You can probably relate to how I am feeling. My dear juniors and lower-classmen, I want to share these memories of mine to you because I wish I could seize my moments earlier. I don’t regret seeing college tennis differently and more wholeheartedly only in my last year here, but I wish I had spent more time living it fully. I wish my mind were in the present instead of an unchangeable past or uncontrollable future from the start. Now as I am leaving, I wish you to live it fully, to feel every moment deeply and see your teammates in every team setting. See how they battle through a match, how they laugh. Look them in the eye when they look at you. No matter what your attitude is towards your sport now, I wish you could make decisions that you never regret. Four years could be as fast as a snap. And after these four years, you will possibly never participate in a team sport with such discipline, effort, and self-imposed obligations, that is much more intense than a part-time job. Be grateful and respectful towards each moment, not only for the sport you are playing, but also to all your college moments. I wish I could do it again, so please, live it up. Make me jealous.
I really have said a lot of things, so I’ll shut up now. Lastly, I want to selfishly give a shout-out to all the international student-athletes here. You guys flew across the border to a foreign school, speaking a second language and playing a team sport with a new culture. So give yourself some credit! I mean a lot of credits.
Thank you very much guys. That’s all I want to say.
Next up:
Hot Grill ep12. TBC!
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