good afternoon and welcome back to another episode of the scoop my name is carly brewster some students do not know how to balance high school classes and sports for when it's time for college but it's important to know your plan starting a sport early to be skilled by the time you enter high school is a smart idea that many athletes do this can be beneficial for when high school begins and i'm here to discuss athletics and high school and move into college to continue an athletic career the ability to balance academic and outside schedules is a trait that many do not acquire today i'm here to inform you in transitioning the college at an early start my guest today has been playing tennis long before high school and has somehow found a way to balance her busy schedule full of academic priorities and intense tennis lessons all while searching for colleges sometimes fighting finding the right colleges for your academic abilities and athletic abilities can be difficult looking for colleges in your junior and senior can be a stressful task that pains you to think about almost seventy percent of students in the u s go to college and nearly ninety percent of students in pennsylvania attend college no matter how tedious searching for colleges sounds it's important to start early when you're unsure about who to talk to or where to start looking at the transition to college can seem stressful today i'm joined with nina durand so a junior at peter's township high school and a current varsity tennis player me as a part of the students who will be going to college very  soon thank you for joining me today nina really appreciate it i like the first start out by asking you when you started playing tennis and why you continued to play it until today basically i started playing tennis as soon as i could hold a racket because my mom was just obsessed with it like she started out when she was older and she wanted us to start when we were young and i continued playing and first it was just like oh it's kind fun i'll do this i wasn't great and then like fifth sixth grade that's when ever i got serious and started taking lessons and started putting the time and effort and hope to get where you are today my m it seems like some sort of trait that everyone in your family placed on this is accurate ok so how far did you think you would get in your future with tennis no where like i had no coronation at all and i couldn't do like i was in the talented person my sister was at the time like she just was naturally good at it i worked at it ok so this is something you've developed over time and it seems to pay off because this year in our season we made it to the great time so while we're at with you as i know this is your junior year and it's a pretty busy schedule what kind of classes did you have this year and how are they different from last year this year i'm taking three a classes as well as all honors courses and they're all very rigorous and time consuming so last year it was a little bit more laid back even though i was still in all honors it was a lot more manageable for me playing tennis and taking it but i found a way i have a lot of help from people like again my sister helps me with my homework sometimes and i go to tutoring as much as i can to help keep my grades up to the stand that i want them to be  and it's really hard to balance everything so if other students have a busy schedule like you full of work tennis academics and obviously an outside life what kind of tips can you give to them to kind of keep their grades up don't procrastinate that's the worst thing you can do and i'm saying that as a procrastinator and i would also recommend if you're struggling on a course find a person or tutor that you can get to help you bring up your grades and keep up with all the work that you have and if you know what you're capable of and sign up for classes that are more rigorous than you can handle just know your abilities and like try not to stress yourself out to the point where you break essential so i know that you're playing tennis next year because it'll be your senior year on the varsity team what are you thinking about sports college wise i i haven't really put that much thought into it because i want to go to higher level schools and you know what i mean and they are usually the one schools and i'm definitely not a d one level but if i were to go to like a d two or d three school i would play for shore so basically if the college you're going to kind of allows your schedule to have time to like do your academics i'm ok so i know that junior year is like everyone says it's the hardest year how do you think you would compare it to next year like academically yes do you think it would be easier for you to play tennis and  do sports for sure because junior year you're struggling with a lot of people it's our first time taking a p classes i know it was mine and they don't exactly know what to expect and it's kind of just all thrown at you one day and  i think in senior year you kind of already took your se t as you have looked at the colleges you want to go to you've applied to colleges and it's just a little bit less work in that aspect so it's kind of a year to relax and take a break before you even start college as initially ok so what kind of goals are you setting for yourself next year since it will be your last year on the tennis team and you want to make it your best one i just want to have  i don't want too much pressure i just think this year the team bonded so much more than that the year before that and i just wanted to keep bonding and having a great time i was a freshman last year and i can definitely see that this year it was a lot easier to communicate with the j v and varsity because it was like you were a whole group yeah it wasn't like two separate teams which is really cheesy to say but we were like all one team even though we were in the same places at the same time and that was like really nice to have  n what would you like yourself to achieve individually next year like tennis i would like to keep my spot at line one doubles maybe that would be nice for them that i don't  i kind of go through up and down like spouts with the sometimes i'll be like yes let's go play tennis consistently for two or three months and then like i'll just take a four month break that's what i'm doing right now i think it's good to have a with those dry spells but it's taken a long time so this is my first year in versity and it was really nice coming up to see all the other girls what does it take to make for city  just play your game and like don't doubt yourself i know my freshman year i went in there and i was like no way i'm going to make for a city and when you go in with that i'm not going to do it mentality you're not going to do it like that's what happened with me i didn't make it but i'd say just work at it what what do you like better your first years playing tennis or your junior varsity years bit different because there were people i wasn't familiar with and they weren't exactly a while per se but this year it was so much better and it was just a lot of fun and i know that  state of the competition level really increases because like you can make it to appeals and everything like that so why do you think that the comfort of competition level for varsity is so high compared to the j v and do you think that the j v teams should kind of meet the standards of our city or do you think there should still be a gap between the two i think no matter what you do there's probably going to be a gap between your  difficult because it is the school's best like every line one player has worked very hard to get where they are especially in schools like north allegheny and mount lebanon they all are very hardworking people and they dedicate their lives to tennis which is something that kind of needs to happen if you want to play at that and i know definitely the j v did really well this year instead of our city and there's a lot of parents on the sidelines kind of coaching us on  being very supportive so what did your parents say about you thinking about playing a sport and college they told me to try and balance that out because i want to go into the medical field when i go to college and that's a very rigorous thing to do and adding a sport on top of it could just like make it a lot harder so they just told me to be wary and what kind of lessons have your parents teach you from earth taught you excuse me from your past and from their past experience in college about balancing their schedules and times my mom actually played field hockey for pitt and she was she just told me do your work and don't procrastinate and you'll be ok and my dad actually i don't think he played on east well he was he was a nerd and  he just got straight a's all through college all through high school and went to med school and he just told me to do ok so some of you one of your parents have to support the other hasn't so in high school has ever been a time where you're playing tennis and also do your academics where you thought like i can't go to practice today or like my schedule there needs to be a break i've definitely thought that i've never actually acted on those thoughts because i know i can't spare that time like i can't miss a practice and expect to go back and be exactly where i was the next time and it's a difficult thing to balance and  there's also a lot of kids or school who don't really know how to bounce that so on what do you think that our school could do more to teach kids how to balance their schedules i think that our school is very high level with the academics and they push a lot of harder classes on you and they're just like you should do this i think that they should try and scale that back a little bit because it's not all about the classes or the grades it's about how hard you're working probably say junior year because there just is so much of a difference in the workload and i know my freshman year even with all the classes i was taking it wasn't like hard for me to balance everything ok thinking you know we're going to cut to a is a tennis coach so what is she told you about her experience coaching the other girls she loves i was the main problem with everything she loves everyone on the team she had a really great time and i think she wants to do it again next year i just hope she doesn't yell at me for saying that ok and what does she notice about how the other girls go on balancing their schedules compared to the way that you do it i think she really thinks that everyone's doing a great job with what they're doing has never had a person like have to sit out of a match because they're not doing their work or they're not caught up in school and she's a very laid back person in general and i feel like she thinks that whatever you're capable of to like you have to do whatever you have to do to the best of your abilities and she will understand that ok i think that's really great for like that kind of bonding where they realize that you know everyone's kind of doing their own thing and it's all working out so on the topic of coaches have you been talking to any college coaches yet and  so why do you think it's important to talk to college coaches early i haven't personally but i know mia hoff our has talked to a few and i think that it's really if you want to play in college it's really beneficial to build that relationship with a coach to say i want to go to the school and i want to play on your team will you please consider me and show them your strengths and your weaknesses and just create that connection that she need to and that's really important why do you think students take around a year or two years to kind of look into colleges it's just a very stressful idea like you're leaving what you comfortable with for a long period of time and even though it's an exciting thing it's also very nerve wracking and anxiety provoking and i know there's colleges that come into college fairs and other schools and even our schools sometimes  have you ever visited those if not do you think that students should go there to see what colleges they might consider or what colleges they'd like to a woman eight i mean i don't think it would hurt a person to go to the college fair i think that going to the campuses is good too like if you know you have had that school in your mind for a long time like i've had in my mind let's go pitt and i would rather go visit their campus and go to a college fair and talk to like a representative like tor you know because some colleges really like to see you going there and taking tours of their campus ok so why have you been considering and it's just a really great school a really big but it's really rigorous but not to the point where you're like i can't do this pushes people to be better and i know your sister  who played for the tennis team who has that bit i know that it was probably a difficult transition to go from the senior in high school to a freshman in college so i do you know what her experience has been like and if there's any tips that she has given you  she's been transitioning for a while it's not an easy thing to do because even though it's close to home it's still like you are in a familiar environment and you have to talk to new people you have to you don't know if you like your roommate or not because even if you meet them online it's like do i really like you and i think she's still adjusting but she's learning to balance  time better and not waiting till the last minute to do all of her projects and stuff is this time balance for her something that she learned in high school or in college and if it's something that she learned in college what do you think the school can do to kind of teach kids early on that this is something you should learn in high school i think she was always kind of struggled with that she still does i don't really think she is a great time budgeter she i don't like it's not a skill that she's worn through people she just works long hours of the night but i think that our school could just i don't really know they tell us not to procrastinate but we don't really it's kind of just like you have to tell yourself you got to do this and can't keep pushing it off and that can be really difficult when it comes to homework and stuff like that socially english homework reading is not fun so have you talked to any of your teachers about what maybe they did in college and then that kind of influenced you to decide what you wanted to do no i haven't there any clubs that you do outside of school that maybe correspond to clubs you would do in college or a career that you would do in i'm an n h s counts as a club and i just joined long and it's really fun and time consuming which i didn't expect when i went into it but that's and why did you join these clubs knowing that junior year was going to be one of the hardest years and colleges like to see extra try are you looking to get any academic or athletic scholarships and if so do you know what kind you're looking for thought necessary not necessarily athletic scholarships because i don't think i'm like  one and i don't really know to look into it yeah i know looking for scholarships and applying for them takes a long time which a lot of kids do look into the end of their junior year but to kind of take it back a few steps when you first started playing tennis which was long before high school what was the goal you had rate before freshman year when you about when you were about to join the team i just wanted to do my best and i beat my sisters so that was kind of fun too and what kind of influence that your parents have between you and your sister because i know the way you learned tennis was like two very different ways so how did they manage to help you both even though it was so diverse my mom and my sister play very similar games they're both like scrappy players they never had like julia had training but my mom did it and she plays more like my mom like she does n't she goes for the right shots at the right time and i play like my stupid i go for shots of their own times but i think that that's how we balance it out i worked more with my mom and she i don't really know i'm kind of just distrust person in general when you're you talk to me i'm probably stressed about something and i think that even though i have more time to do stuff i'm like oh i have more time to do that colleges are going to be looking at practice because the more you play the more you'll be in like the groove of things like if you take super long breaks in between  new play you kind of lose that momentum you had at that point i know i play all year round so what kind of like tournament or other like ways of playing tennis do you partake in during the off tournaments i would recommend doing that though because clinics are more like working on your strokes you have like five minutes of serving and tournaments are like you play matches with people and it helps you get into that mode for the  season and i know that the peterson of tennis center offers clinics if you just like walk around you can sign up so what's it like to sign up for a clinic cycling creek pretty much the same is just a little bit farther away but they're very similar like similar places because like the two people who really brought everything mike and paul they used to work it peters so what's the difference between going creek and peter sort of clinics because i know that a lot of our tennis players are of split down the middle between both i think kind of has upper level of players because i know peter this has a lot of younger kids coming into the clinics that aren't really as experienced they're putting them in like  vance clinics and they should probably be in like media clinics and they're laying with high schoolers and it's not as competitive as it would be at glen creek you should definitely think about it so why are you still undecided about play sport in college because i know it has to do with your schedule and everything but the fact that you haven't talked in the college coaches yet it's kind of different from other girls that i've been talking to i i don't know i just feel like it's a lot more pressure in college than it would be in high school because in high school you're just like having fun and in college you're like oh this is kind of real i do know people who play a lot of it like goes to university of delaware and she loves and it really helped change her game from what they traditionally teach you in lessons and clinics to like less conventional way that made her when she was like number one on her team and i don't know i just i haven't really put much thought into it so i haven't talked to coaches that's the reason why i just kind of an indecisive person in general ok well thank you i really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to come interview today that is all the time we have for today we've learned about the process of transitioning to college and how it benefits high school students the amount of work that goes into the end of your high school athletic career has proven to be a challenging task preparing for college is time consuming but today's interview with nina should have shed some light on why you should prepare earlier it's important to get advice from others including your family because looking for colleges is something that you shouldn't do alone the more help that you have from your family in the school the easier it will be to look for colleges benefiting your athletic and academic abilities not only is it challenging to continue a sport in high school that you would like to pursue in college but there has to be a happy medium when it comes to the bouncing of academics you know has told us how she bounces her athletic and academic career and how it has affected her through her three years of high school finding a balance between