- 2011 Skills
Personal Statement
My name is Aryan von Eicken, I am 16 years old, born on August 26, 1995. Right now I am 6,1 tall and weigh 145 lbs. I was born a German but have lived in the States all my life and will become an American citizen this summer (2012).
It is very hard/strange for me to fill out this recruiting profile, since I left the States after 3rd grade to move from Boston to Ramstein AFB, Germany, where I have lived ever since. Unfortunately I never had a chance to compete in any tournaments in the States. I only started to play tennis at the age of 12. At age 14 (as a freshmen) I moved up to no. 2 on our HS varsity team during the season. That year, Ramstein HS, finished 1st place at the DoDDS Europeans as a team. As a sophomore and junior I was no. 1 on our varsity team. This year (my junior year) my partner and I lost the European doubles finals (14:12 in the tiebreaker, 3rd set) :-). This year I also won one of the local youth tournaments in the area, was runner up in several other tournaments, moved up to the highest division in the state with my U18 team and played for the local men's team for Landstuhl TC.I am an LK 17 for german rankings but hope to improve my ranking quite a bit this summer since I have worked very hard over the winter. I am sure there are many players my age that play much better tennis than myself. Most of them surely started to play at a much younger age. But I can say that I love playing tennis and that I do believe to have some talent (I played a lot of baseball and soccer before I started tennis) and would really love to play tennis in college. What skill level I will reach before I enter college remains to be seen, but I do believe that I may have a decent chance to play at D II level. I have not decided yet which college I would like to attend, but preferably not a really huge one (up to max. 7000 students). I am also not sure at this point what I want to study. As I am quite good in math and science I may go into research or teaching (college level).
I am and have always been a team player (although in tennis one tends to find a lot of egos) and I believe I can improve my skills quite a bit before I graduate from HS. The best way to find out about my talent in tennis is probably to ask my tennis coach, Frank Schmitz, who played as a professional tennis player (ATP) for many years until 2001 (he was in the Wimbledon qualification round at some point). He is a great teacher and will surely answer any questions about me in a very realistic and honest way. Anyhow, as much as I love tennis, school always comes first, as I (most likely) will never turn pro in tennis. After my Junior Year I now have a weighted GPA of 4.29 after taking 6 Ap classes my junior year and get A's in 5 of those classes which made my junior year GPA a 4.71 . I am trying to play as much as possible this summer to improve as much as possible. I really try to do, whatever I do, as well as possible. But again, the most realistic and honest input and assessment, regarding my talent, skills and attitude in tennis and as a person, you will surely get from my coach and teacher Frank Schmitz. He can evaluate that much better than I ( for the tennis part :-). Of course, I can also send any coach who may be interested some videos of me playing tennis. Nevertheless, my plan and hope is - to attend the best college I can find, and somehow be able to afford it to, as my dad has a lot of love for us kids, but does not have a lot of money. So any kind of scholarship would really help me and us.
Thank you for reading all this.
Aryan
