Ramanand Vegesna (12) can flip a tennis racket and catch it over and over again, without stopping or even breaking eye contact from the friends he’s chatting with. He simply flicks his wrist, sending the racket’s red-black frame tumbling through the air until his fingers close around its white grip with a small, satisfying thud. With the briefest of pauses and a casual movement, the red, black and white rise once more, lazily somersaulting back towards a waiting hand. This skill is part of the vast expanse that lies beneath the tip of the Ramanand iceberg, concealed behind a quiet facade.

With an uncle who runs a tennis and badminton club in India and a family who enjoy the sport, it was perhaps inevitable that Ramanand would be introduced to tennis. He began playing at Niru’s Tennis Academy when he was four years old with close friend Rakesh Nori (12), alternating between soccer on Saturdays and tennis on Sundays. It was then that he began to develop his love for the sport.

“It was almost like he was in his element when he was playing tennis,” Rakesh said, recalling their childhoods. “I think he has that sort of mental capacity to do really well … He never gives up and tennis is really definitely a sport about your endurance and how much are you willing to take and how much you are willing to give.”

And Ramanand is willing to give a lot for tennis, perhaps best exemplified in the last match of his middle school career, which he described as an event that defined his current worldview. Having sprained his ankle the previous day and “begged” his doctor to let him go on court, Ramanand was playing number one singles “a lot better than [he] should have.” He managed a comeback late in the game, but Ramanand’s feet gave out as he chased a ball during the match point.

“They just stopped moving,” Ramanand said. “It wasn’t because of the pain, but something in my brain just stopped working and I froze. And I know what that feels like, and I just despise it so much. So anytime I’m in a tense situation I do everything I can, whether that be just staying calm [or] taking deep breaths so that I don’t ever feel that again.”

This realization wasn’t the only lesson Ramanand learned from tennis. With it came a fiercely competitive spirit. It’s not a spirit that drives him away from others, rather it’s an attitude that motivates Ramanand to help those around him as well. Mihir Sharma (12), Ramanand’s teammate and friend played together with him at last year’s WBAL doubles finals, where they played a three-hour match against a team that was expected to beat them in thirty minutes.

“The whole time [Ramanand] was encouraging me to get better on the court, giving me things that I could do and encouraging me when I made a mistake and owning up to his own faults,” Mihir said. “He was the one who kept us together as a team, which is why we were able to play those guys for such a long time.”

Even outside of tennis, Ramanand strives to encourage his friends and enjoy life with them.

“Most of the memorable [moments we have] come from where we’re just laughing together so hard that we can’t even breathe anymore, losing the sense of time,” Rakesh said. “[Ramanand] can make you forget about all of your issues and your problems, make you have a good time and just laugh. That’s what I cherish the most.” 

Ramanand is able to apply these strengths outside of tennis, in both his academics and his social life. 

“He can think outside of the box very well,” Gabriele Stahl, who taught Ramanand math in his sophomore and junior years, said. “He approaches problems from a very analytical side, but it doesn’t mean that he always goes the path we have done in class. He sometimes comes up with other methods to solve problems.”

Ultimately, Ramanand’s goal is simple — to live life without regrets.

“As I’ve grown older, I’ve [begun to] feel like ‘oh I could have done this better, I could have done that better’, and that’s my personality as a perfectionist,” Ramanand said. “But also, I understand that in the moment I made this decision because I thought it was the right thing to do, and I want to live my life like that: not doing things that in the moment I know I shouldn’t be doing, that in the moment I know I’ll regret later.”