It’s Not Over Yet by Chamaine

It’s Not Over Yet by Chamaine - August 2026 Scholarship Essay

When I first started playing tennis competitively, losing was difficult for me. I would work hard, prepare for my matches, and still walk off the court with a loss. After experiencing this enough times, I reached a point where I questioned whether I should continue playing. It was frustrating to put so much effort into something and not always see the results I wanted. I began to think that maybe losing meant I was not good enough.
My mom noticed how I was reacting to those losses and gave me feedback that completely changed the way I approached tennis. She reminded me that I could not let a loss convince me to give up. Instead of focusing on the outcome, she encouraged me to focus on what I could still control. I did not have to be winning at that exact moment to still have a chance to win the match.
At first, this was easier to understand than to actually practice. Tennis is a very mental sport. When you are behind in the score, it is easy to start thinking about how close you are to losing instead of thinking about what you can do to turn the match around. I began to change the way I talked to myself during matches. When I was down, instead of thinking, “I am going to lose,” I would tell myself, “It is not over yet.”
That mindset began to change my game.
I started treating every point as an opportunity rather than assuming the match was already decided. If I lost a point, I focused on what I could learn from it and what I could do differently on the next one. If I fell behind, I reminded myself that the score was not the end of the match. There were still points left to play, and as long as I continued fighting, the outcome could change.
This mindset has helped me come back and win games that I once would have mentally given up on. More importantly, it taught me that feedback is not always about being told what you did wrong. Sometimes, it is about being given a different way to look at a challenge. My mom's advice helped me realize that I had more control over my response to failure than I thought I did.
I now carry that lesson beyond tennis. When something does not go the way I expected, I try not to immediately see it as a reason to stop. I ask myself what I can learn, what I can change, and what I can still do. Whether I am struggling with school, working toward a personal goal, or facing an unexpected setback, I remind myself of the same words I learned to repeat on the court: “It is not over yet.”
Tennis taught me how to compete, but learning how to respond to losing taught me something much bigger: growth does not come from never failing. It comes from learning how to keep going after you do.