Tessa’s Athlete Card

Tessa is a 12-year-old junior doubles player at Lakeside Pickleball Club who came to pickleball from tennis, and it shows in the best way: quick hands at the net, a drive with real pace, and no fear of a fast exchange. She plays the left side when her team stacks, so her forehand takes the middle. The gap this season has been everything soft. She drove nearly every third ball instead of dropping it, so her team rarely made it to the kitchen line; she got stuck in the transition zone and attacked dinks that were below the net; and when she got nervous, in a junior bracket or a mixed-age field where adults aimed every ball at the kid, she hit everything harder. The spring's work went straight at those three, and her DUPR has climbed from 3.2 to 3.6 as the soft game came in.

• ▸Genuinely fast hands. When the ball speeds up at the kitchen line, she wins more of those exchanges than she loses.
• ▸A real drive, built on years of tennis, that she can use on purpose once the point calls for it.
• ▸Competitive and unafraid of adult opponents; she wants to be on the court with players who push her.
• ▸Starting to trust a third-shot drop, which is getting her team to the kitchen line instead of stranding them at the baseline.

Tessa is working to add a soft game to a hard one. Specifically: a third-shot drop she can land in the kitchen when the return is deep, the habit of moving through the transition zone with a split step and a reset instead of swinging on the run, the patience to dink until a ball is actually attackable, and a between-points routine with her partner that keeps nerves from turning into over-hitting. The hands are already a weapon; this season is about getting her to the place on the court where those hands win points.