[wpbvideo id=’304219′]Tennis wasn’t supposed to be Garrett Howard’s sport.
“My dad and older brother played, and I played it one time and thought it was stupid,” he said.
Now, he’s in the state tournament.
His favorite sport as a kid was badminton, and he got pretty good at it. Eventually, his gym teacher convinced him to give tennis another try. This time it stuck.
“If I don’t think I’m good at something I don’t really like to do it,” Howard said. When he picked tennis back up he had a better feel for the game and realized he was better than most his age, and invested more and more time into it.
Kickapoo hasn’t had great team success in tennis this decade, and it became Howard’s mission to help push the team back into postseason relevance.
“My goal every year was to win districts,” he said. This season the Chiefs finally broke through, for the first time in 10 years.
“It was my thought every single year, ‘I can do this. I can do this.’ Obviously the years before it didn’t happen, but we were pushing for that. Just helping other teammates push to train to get better so that goal could be achieved.”
Howard achieved a lot of goals this season with a 21-5 singles record and a 16-2 doubles record. He’d never managed to break through the crowded field of individual competitors until this year.
“Individually he wanted to get to state,” Kickapoo head coach Eric Wilbur said. “This is his first opportunity to get to state and for him to achieve that in his final year is really a perfect ending to a lot of years of tennis and preparation for this moment.”
The moment is Thursday, and regardless of how it plays out, Howard still has a long career ahead of him. He’s signed with Southwest Baptist University’s tennis program.
