By Samantha Keller ’19, Sports Editor

Breaking the Top 20 rankings in any high school sport in New Jersey is a huge accomplishment in and of itself. Add on the fact that Newark Academy high school is composed of under 500 students, yet competing with schools more than four times its size, and you get what seems like an unlikely formula for success. Nevertheless, no shock to anyone, the Newark Academy Girls’ Tennis Team has once again defied these unlikely odds, securing themselves a Top 3 ranking in the state and the first seed in the Non-public B State Tournament. Achieving this level of quality requires not only talented individual athletes and strategic coaching, but also demands a mental fortitude to overcome the pressure of the expectations that have been thrust upon the team. But the pressures do not disappear when a team achieves its desired ranking. The true challenge is in maintaining this prestige and conquering the mental and physical challenges that accompany it. The privileges of high-level success are obvious, but is this dominance truly a pure pleasure for the athlete or is the joy balanced by the burden of maintaining this success?

The pressure that is placed on talented athletes at all levels has been a topic of discussion amongst sports psychologists for many years. When sports psychologist Patrick J. Cohn addressed this subject, he wrote, “Pressure comes in many forms depending on the person and how an athlete ’thinks’” about the competition” [Performing Under Pressure, 2006]. In Cohn’s assessment of these many forms, he proposed six main contributors to the pressures an athlete feels. These include expectations from the athlete himself/herself, the athlete’s parents, coaches or fans, the threat of losing a spot on the team, and the fear of failure, embarrassment, or making mistakes. Not only does Cohn acknowledge the obvious pressures on any athlete to win, but he also recognizes an important, less publicized form of pressure: that of not losing. When an athlete achieves a certain level of prominence, the sport often becomes more about the losing than the winning. American professional tennis player Serena Williams put it best when she explained, “It’s really not easy to go out there every day when it’s a much bigger story to lose than to win.”

Though they are not professional athletes, the Newark Academy girls’ tennis team is still met with shock upon rare losses. Announcements that the team lost are so uncommon that they are often met with gasps and awe. In fact, this year, the team’s only regular season losses came in its two matches against Millburn. When senior captain Sydney Loh was asked how the team’s mentality changes when they face Millburn, she commented, “Millburn has been our only competition in our regular season for so long that I think a lot of the team goes into our matches with the mindset that we’re going to lose. We’ve been closer every year. We just need to change that mindset.” Even for those athletes who are considered the best of the best, the pressure of expectation can still get in the way.