Author: nhagberg

Shhhhhhh…. We are finishing our 40th Summer of Tennis & Life Camps. And we are going to release some news publicly in October of what we plan to do to ensure that the next 40 years are even better. Stay tuned. Shhhhhhh… The other day, we received a $1,000 donation to TLC scholarships from a…

Smile! Isn’t that what every photographer says? But what if you don’t want to smile?  What if you’re doing something with your life that no longer brings you joy?  What’s going to make you smile again? And what if you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are at and you no longer have…

Sometimes puzzle pieces don’t fit.  I try to jam them in where they don’t belong.  And they refuse to go.  Or they break.  Which means they refuse to go forever. Sometimes we need to step back and look a bit before we jam the piece where it doesn’t belong.  Maybe learning the patience to find…

One of our camper’s opponents drove a tough shot into the corner, and the camper went for an ill-advised winner.  He tried to do too much.  He missed.  He hit his shoe with his racket.  Then he hit it again.  And again. I happened to be walking past at the moment.  Lucky him. I called…

For almost 40 years we have been putting smiley faces on rackets.  Let me correct myself.  Steve has been putting smiley faces on rackets.  When he took control of the ink stencil pen, no one could wrest the thing out of his hands.  When he had to miss a day due to illness or another…

What’s the score?  We hear that phrase all the time on the court and in life.   It is the measure of success in the eyes of many in this world.  How many games did we win in a match, how many A’s did we get in school, how many sales did we rack up for…

I have a tendency in my life to hold on tight to what is “MINE”.  In fact, we have a woodprint in our house that has two trolls wrestling over something inconsequential and both screaming “It’s mine, Mine, MINE!!!”  I walk past it every day and it is a reminder.  That I should be ruler…

I saw it happen in the state tournament.  Two of our TLC campers were playing each other in the first round.  To my dismay, one was cheating the other. (Not everyone gets the message the first time around.  It’s a habit that is not instantly reversed).  The other knew it.  She had a chance to retaliate…

I was playing junior tennis and was literally a hick from the sticks who nobody knew (I am still a hick from the sticks who no one knows).  I played the #4 seed on two consecutive occasions and was fortunate to play some of my best tennis.  Both matches went to three sets, 6-4 in…

It’s tax time!!! What better time to talk about cheating!? (No one calls it cheating on taxes, though, right?  Unless it’s someone else.  No, we call it “fudging”.  Sounds tastier than “cheating”). A tennis pro and coach I admire wrote me last fall, and this is what he said: This summer while coaching at JTT sectionals…