- 2024 Spotlight #3
Personal Statement
•ABOUT ME
I am a 16-year-old up-coming sports-star, from Kampala, Uganda. I am very passionate about personal development in life skills, talent development and academics. Arising from this pursuit, at an early age of 11 years, I attended a Mentorship Program and as a key deliverable from the training, I defined my life goals and designed them into a pictorial chart (my dream chart). One of the goals is to play competitive tennis and turn into a professional player with a dream to win at least one grand slam tournament by the age of 25 years.
I am a diligent pursuer of excellence in all things I do and this is reflected in, not only my sports journey especially with tennis, basketball, table tennis, netball and athletics, but also in my academics. When I read Michelle Obama’s book titled “Becoming”, her quote, “No one, I realized was going to look out for me unless I pushed for it”, represented appropriately my attitude to what I do everyday in my pursuit of personal goals.
•MY KEY ACHIEVEMENTS TO DATE (My result-oriented approach to life)
Within a period of four (4) years, I have been able to transform myself from a child who was classified as having a medical condition of critical obesity, to a national team representative for my country, Uganda, in tennis for Under-14 year girls and now Under 16 year category girls. I have been able to play at the East African Zonal Tennis Competitions (consisting of 5 countries). My performance during this Regional tournament earned me a merit-based invitation (based on points accumulated and resulting ranking in Africa) to the prestigious Africa Junior Championship. I was part of the National Tennis Team that recently played in the Billie Jean Tennis Cup. I have participated in many International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments in various countries. I am currently the highest ranked Ugandan Junior Female Player under the ITF ranking system.
I was selected in December 2021 to be part of the Uganda National swimming Team that represented the country in the CANA Zone 4.
I always focus on stretching my potential and this has led me to win various skills challenge contests in basketball tournaments organized in Uganda and I have been voted the Most Valuable Player a couple of times.
•ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
My academic performance has been outstanding and I have been recognized as an Honor roll student (outstanding character, academic excellence, smartness, visible leadership) for my class, multiple times. I have been able to diligently optimize my time-utilization to balance
between my travels for sports competitions outside Uganda during the academic term and my academic progress.
•SOCIAL IMPACT
My country has many young children who have a passion for the tennis sport but they end up dropping the interest in their youthful stage mainly because of lack of role-models in the sport to inspire them. I believe in leading by example.
It has been and continues to be my pursuit to inspire other children and youths and I have diligently used my sports excellence to impact the young children especially girls and the less privileged communities through mentorship and my leading by example so that they understand that there are no limits to a determined mind. I have been able to demonstrate that hard-work backed by consistency and perseverance delivers the desired results. This is the basic explanation for my transition from a stage of critical obesity at the age of 11 years to a national team representative in not only Tennis but also in swimming competitions by the age of 13 years.
•SCHOOL REPRESENTATION AND MY OTHER PASSIONS
As a result of my spirit of excellence, I have been able to represent my School in various competitions( Uganda National Student Convention) , in various sports disciplines that included; Lawn Tennis, Netball, Table Tennis, 4X400M athletics relay and 800M race. Our choir (to which I belong) also won a Silver medal at the convention. The Convention had 29 schools participating and 939 student participants. At the UNSC of 2022, I won two (2) gold medals, that is, in netball and tennis with silver medals in 4x400M relay and 800M race.
In my free-time, I love to play the piano while composing my leisure songs. I was also honored to play the piano as part of entertainment for Amb. Deborah Malac during the Mentorship Class. I also read motivation and self-development books.
•OTHER SKILLS
As a personal initiative to develop my public speaking skills and level of confidence, I started up an initiative at home code-named the “Parliament” in which my siblings and parents join to discuss key matters concerning every member of the family. This has greatly enhanced my public speaking and confidence levels including for my siblings.
Further, I have been profiled on national televisions both on NTV-Uganda and NBS-Sports TV (operated by Next Media). I have also been interviewed at various press conferences following the various in-country tennis and basketball competitions that I have participated.
•OVERALL SUITABILITY FOR SELECTION
I believe that getting an opportunity to work with professional coaches across the world through the opportunity provided by NCSA will go a long way in helping me raise the quality of my tennis game, further enhance my competitiveness to a new global level and propel my spirit of excellence to new heights when I am enrolled and I will be a great brand ambassador for NCSA.
Abigail Nabasinga Mulungi
