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Junior Nate Clement, Robinson’s tennis team captain, is usually seen with just his tennis racket but has recently taken a newfound interest in pickleball and will now be hitting the pickleball court more frequently.
This year is not Clement’s first year playing pickleball though; he was first introduced to the sport in 2020 by his grandparents but he didn’t play the sport competitively or play in any tournaments. He quit playing pickleball back in 2020 but now in 2023, has recently started to play again when the sport started to gain more popularity.
“Pickleball has been super fun and now that the dynamic has changed from what we used to know as an old-person sport to a younger sport, I think it will continue to gain popularity and hopefully become an official high school and college sport,” Clement said.
In previous school years, Robinson’s tennis team excelled in the sport by winning match after match. Unfortunately, this year the tennis team has lost some of their top players but luckily, the tennis season hasn’t quite started yet so the team has more time to play. Clement still wants to continue playing tennis throughout high school alongside pickleball and believes that with the help of more players joining and practicing. They can reach their goals in winning and he can bring his team to victory.
“Our goal for this school year is to try to find the players who can get us back to where we were last year. While I think it’s going to be a challenge, I think if we practice a lot and get underclassmen and new players to join to help us win matches then we will be fine,” Clement said.
As of right now, Clement has been practicing more pickleball than tennis but he still feels that tennis is an important piece in his life. He has just had more opportunities to be playing pickleball at the moment. Balancing two competitive sports at the same time can be very difficult for any athlete.
“I would say that it is difficult to try and play competitively in two sports that are very similar but can mess up the other one, so finding a balance between the two can be hard,” Clement said.
The reason Clement has been putting off on playing tennis a lot right now is because pickleball is a fairly new sport, so it becomes more and more competitive each day.
“Given that the sport is so new there’s always other new people playing and getting good. I have to stay playing as much as I can,” Clement said.
