Drilled

He crept onto the tennis court just as any seventy-four year old man would, with the hunched over back and the stomping walk.   He had his clipboard in hand and he was ready to tell me exactly what I was doing; both wrong and right.   I had never had a coach like him, nor will I ever again.   Coach Jim Carter could tell you just about anything you wanted to know about tennis or anything else he had the knack for knowing.   He was and is still, by far, the most intelligent and influential man I have had the privilege to have in my life.   Coach Carter taught me more about myself than I had learned in my lifetime.   Daily, he drilled into me his three most important principles in life: self discipline, responsibility and respect.
My whole life, I have always been told to “respect your elders, listen to your elders, they know all”.   I did not ever really take either of those to heart until my three years as a varsity tennis player under the reign of Coach Jim Carter.   Coach Carter has been a tennis coach since 1973 and has influenced more people’s lives than you can ever imagine.   Self discipline is how he survived the first part of his coaching career and now it has become a way of life that he has chosen to pass   on to his players.   Coach Carter teaches all of his players to “practice like you will play and play like it is you’re last match”.   Without that motto, it is possible that I would have become a gigantic slacker. I am, after all, a high school student.   Coach Carter did not use our youthful age as an excuse. Every day during practice, we proudly gave it our all; one hundred percent. The reason:   because from day one, we knew that it was expected of us. So, from the very first day of tennis, a mere three years ago, I have given my hardest fight in everything I’ve done because he drilled it into us on the tennis court.   Without the self discipline learned from Coach Carter, I’m not certain how I would handle situations which require me to give my all to achieve...