At the service line, she–all five-foot-four of her–stands ready to receive her partner’s feed: knees bent, racket up with its face parallel to her body, on the balls of her feet slightly farther than shoulder width apart, eyes watching the neon ball about to bounce onto her side of the blue court. Warming up with the same focus and discipline she would use in a match, she approaches the ball as it arcs into the air, swings her racket, connects with the ball, launching it back over the net, and returns to her original spot at the service line.

When junior Grace Chang is not at school, she can be found practicing her groundstrokes, volleys, serves, and footwork on the tennis court. The sixteen-year-old has been playing tennis for ten years, and her various achievements reflect her devotion to the sport: she competes in tournaments all over the Midwest, and in October 2016 she represented Parker in the Illinois State Championship, where she placed in the top 25.  The hope for this October is another state run for Chang.

Of course, to become such a successful athlete, Chang has had to dedicate much of her life to playing tennis. “I was told this story so many times,” Chang said. “My friend had a birthday party, and we were shooting basketballs, and I was six at the time, and I was really good at it. And it was a miniature court, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, but my parents were like, ‘Wow, she has really good hand-eye coordination,’ and so I think my mom was the one that chose tennis.”

Chang remembers playing tennis in the hallway of the Lakeview apartment building she used to live in with her mom and dad, waking up at 5:30 to go play tennis before school at Midtown Athletic Club in Bucktown, and even attending a Parker team practice with girls twice her age when she was in just the fourth grade.

Despite her skill and dedication to tennis for almost a decade, Chang said she has a love-hate relationship with the sport. “It’s a really mental sport,” Chang said.  “It’s really grueling on both your emotional and physical health, and it’s hard to maintain that. But obviously I still love it, and I still work hard on it, because it’s just something that’s a big part of my life.”

Ultimately Chang’s frustrations with the pressure of playing singles and the cost of her mistakes on the tennis court are transcended by her love for the game, her athletic ability, and the fact that she only has a two seasons left to play competitively. “Right now it’s been decided that I’m only gonna be competing in high school, so I’m just doing the best I can with that,” Chang said. “What that means is, after high school I’m still gonna play tennis because I love tennis, but I’m not gonna be competing.”

Chang’s sophomore season was turbulent. “Last year the coaching was just a revolving door, and it was just kind of frustrating,” Chang said.  “We had a solid coaching staff at some points, but other times it was just really iffy.” But Chang won’t stop. “I’ve thought of quitting so many times, like when I was younger I quit tennis for a week, and it was just such a natural thing for me to play tennis that I just went back to it,” Chang said. “And so I just can’t throw away the hard work that I’ve done, and not only that I’ve done, that my parents have done, and that all these coaches have done.”

Chang’s loyalty on and off the court is something junior Sophia Saker, one of Chang’s closest friends, says shines through. “I would say her best quality is her loyalty,” Saker said. “She’s not the person who would go and ditch you for someone else.”

Chang she finds herself using similar methods of dealing with off-court issues as she does with problems on the court. “I kind of just take a moment and think, because I think with a tennis match, you can go through it really quickly, and momentum is huge,” Chang said. “For me, taking the time to think and rest and stop for a second—that’s usually when I can get my momentum going back again.”

The most important things Chang has learned from tennis, she says, are patience, controlling emotions, and working under pressure, and she applies these lessons to her daily life. “For the rest of my life, it’s similar,” she said. “Sometimes in my life I don’t have that time, but I think for both situations, I kind of just try to problem solve and patiently work through it.”

Despite placing within the top 25 at State Championships last year, Chang doesn’t know if she will return this year. “This year, I injured my wrist, and that took me out for a while, and I’ve been trying to redo my forehand, which is a really, really frustrating process,” Chang said. “I don’t know if I’m gonna go to State because I know a lot of injured players from Walter Payton and Lab are coming back. Last year was a good opening because a lot of them were injured, but I don’t know about this year. I hope I can keep it up.”