Alexa, play Hannah Montana – the Climb.

Everyone who knows me more than 5 minutes knows that I’m as competitive as they come. If it can be turned into a “who comes out on top” situation, you best believe that I will act a lot like it’s a matter of life or death. Hence, to no one’s surprise, the same applies to tennis. As soon as I understood that with some training I can return to competitive sports which I haven’t done since 2017 when I stopped showing horses, I knew that playing tournaments is not a question of if but when. Cue the first competitive year of tennis which did conclude as intended but oh boy was the road to get there bumpy as hell.

Before I delve into the details, here’s a quick overview of how Belgian national ranking system for singles works according to Tennis en Padel Vlaanderen:

Dames 5 (3-10 pts) // Dames 4 (15-30 pts) // Dames 3 (35-60 pts) // Dames 2 (65-85 pts) // Dames 1 (90+ pts)

You start from the bottom of the food chain in Dames (ladies) 5 with 3 pts even if you have virtually never even touched a racket. By playing tournaments within your category (and hopefully winning), you will collect points that will twice a year, in May and October, be converted into ranking points which either keeps you in the same group or move you to the next one (e.g. 10 pts stays playing within Dames 5, while 20 pts would move you to Dames 4).

Now that we have gotten the educational formalities out of the way, it’s safe to say I, like all the others, started from the bottom and made my mission to move up. Maybe I got slightly ahead of myself last spring and was slightly too delusional to believe that I could get already to Dames 4 by October after playing *checks notes* tennis for 10 months and tournaments for 5 months. But perhaps in retrospect the fact that I stayed on 10 pts in October was highly beneficial as it would let me play a few more months with stronger Dames 5 players. I feel like I would have gotten my ass kicked to stratosphere had I found myself in Dames 4 before even playing a full year.

First year was a tough cookie. I won my first ever match in April 2025 and then lost 6 in a row. “Demoralizing” is not a strong enough of a word for the feelings I felt during that run but if it wasn’t the consequences of my own actions (aka registering myself in every tournament in Antwerp region that hosted my category). Slowly things started to fall in place and by mid-July I managed to win two tournaments. The first, while exciting, was maybe less rewarding as the second one since there were so little participants whereas in the second I was the player who had to play the most matches. The good form kind of followed me to the next tournament as well but by that time I had genuinely played so much tennis for the level that I was physically and mentally at that I just simply hit a wall. In the days that followed I lost in a quarter final, didn’t think too much of it, played a home club tournament, got my ass kicked in the 1st round and decided with my trainer at the time that we have reached to the undesired stage of overtraining.

Fast forward a bit, autumn in Belgium is generally fairly quiet in terms of tournaments. Compared to spring/summer, not much happens between September and mid-December which combined with a lot of other factors meant a few month break from competing. The use of that time in terms of targeted practices was poor to say the least so moving forward, the ‘off-seasons’ deserve a bit more attention and structure. Got my 10 points on board though and headed into an indoor season with a goal to turn it into 15 by the time spring comes around. Ended up playing 4 tournaments between late December and April. Having 10 points gives you the benefit of skipping the qualifiers which meant faster tennis (yay) and more pressure (yay?) from opponents during the games. Won some, lost some and came home with another tournament win from the final indoor tournament of the season. That was also what I needed to finally push myself over the magical 15 points line.

I was genuinely so happy and relieved to finally get where I wanted. But the thing with doing competitive sports (and being perfectionist on the side) is that it never stops and nothing is ever enough. Once you get to a point, you will always want to see if you can run faster, jump higher and hit harder. That is very much the case here as well. I can safely say that Dames 4 was never the end goal nor it will be. It’s always been Dames 1 at minimum and while I am wholly aware that takes some serious training to get there and beat the 15-something-year-olds along the way who will later probably end up going professional. However, I never said I was normal so the work continues. Next stop is to earn enough points to move at least within the category by this October and if everything works out, knock on the door of Dames 3.

The work that you put in matters. I did and I continue to sacrifice my time, money and effort (joint health included) to get better at this sport. Last year was a proof that it all does pay off because things will get better, sometimes sooner and sometimes later but they will. So why stop here?

Some stats from my Dames 5 era (April 2025 until May 2026)

Matches played: 29 // Wins: 16 – Losses: 13 // Tournament wins: 3 // Earnings: 1 pizza coupon, 1 tennis store coupon, 80€ in cash, new strings, gym bag, Belgian beer

~ just do it, S.

(Also I hope that one day I can stop using random internet photos for my posts and actually have cool photos of me playing. The girl can dream alright.)