Madeleine Nolan '23 Recruiting Profile

My name is Madeleine Anne Nolan. I am 18 years old, in my senior year of high school, and plan to be on the roster of a college tennis team in 2023. Positive work habits, efforts, and attitude undergird my academic and athletic records.  Passionate about human history and geography, global politics, literature, film, human rights, and social justice, I intend to pursue interdisciplinary collegiate studies to discover the career that captures my heart. I wonder about documentary filmmaking or working at the UN, so I am excited to begin exploring my options.  A second goal is to explore whether a career in professional tennis is actually a realistic possibility.

 Working hard to overcome obstacles to reach my goals while retaining an optimistic and loving worldview is the cornerstone of my life.  Humour and laughter are my favored coping strategies for any and all struggles. I began competing in recreational tournaments at age 8 and have now played well over 500 sanctioned tournament matches in the US and Canada.  A rec tennis coach convinced me to shift to left-handed play and a two-handed backhand for power as my passion for and talent as a tennis player became obvious at age 10.  Widespread participation and engagement helped me discover who I am, what I love, where my talents lie, when to persevere, why I play tennis, and how to embrace commitment.  Participating in visual and performing arts nurtured my creativity, volunteering taught me about rights and responsibilities, and helping my grandmother cope with MS showed me the importance of loyalty, patience, compassion, and understanding. Exploration of sports, from medieval sword fighting to yoga, contributed to my physical and mental well-being, and knowledge of good health and nutrition. 

Through tennis play, I learned the benefits of collaboration,  self-reliance , good sportsmanship for success and failure, independence and maturity for travel, self-belief and self-regulation, gratitude for support of my pursuit of tennis excellence, respect for the coaches who devote time and energy to developing my full potential as a high-performance athlete, pride and humility in the titles I have earned, and devotion to the sport I love.  Being allowed to pursue my dual goals of playing tennis at an elite level while earning the credentials to pursue a graduate degree in history or media studies is my penultimate goal. The first step is to move south to nurture  my identity as a tennis player and scholar alongside of my team tennis family.