Sophomore and member of the Oak Park High School varsity girls’ tennis team, Ruby Van Cott has been chosen as Athlete of the Week for Oct. 8.

Van Cott has played tennis since she was about eight or nine-years-old, but started to really compete when she was about 10 years old.

She feels that one reason that she was chosen may have been because she achieved her first golden set (a set won without losing a single point, which would be 24 points in a row) earlier in the season.

“[Van Cott] won all three of her matches to lead the Oak Park girls to an 11-7 win over Royal,” head coach Carl Joyce wrote to the Talon.

She believes that her strength in tennis lies within her ability to bounce back while in a match despite previously losing or being in a negative mindset.

“My weakness would probably be the mental part of staying in the point; I tend to worry about other things throughout the matches instead of thinking where I’m going to hit [the] next ball,” Van Cott wrote to the Talon.

Van Cott feels that she has grown a lot over the course of the entirety of her tennis career, both in the physical and emotional sense.

“The mental part is huge, from being completely distracted and forgetting what the score is to being so upset as to why you lost the last point to not even realizing [that] you are about to serve for the next point. I have definitely gotten better at not thinking about the opponent and just playing my game,” Van Cott wrote.

Her advice to aspiring athletes is to never give up, no matter how badly they are losing.

“You have to always give your best effort and keep pushing through every obstacle,” Van Cott wrote. “Oh, and don’t forget to say the score!”