Polina Burkhard '23 Recruiting Profile

Hello, my name is Polina Burkhard.  I attend Oakdale High School and play on the varsity girls tennis team.  I have been playing tennis since I was eight years old.  I enjoy playing singles, academics with my favorite subjects being biology, English, and creative writing.  I play UTR matches regularly and was the runner up in the County Regional Finals last year, 2021.  

NCAA ID is 2110342102

Polina Burkhard Personal College Essay Statement:

Polina Burkhard, Oakdale High School Ijamsville, MD, Graduation Year: 2023, National Society of High School Scholars Member, Varsity Honors Athlete in Tennis.
Phone #: +1.240.409.3708, Email: [email protected]
Address: 6101 Yeager Ct. New Market, MD 21774
Parents: Ryan & Irina Burkhard, Email: [email protected], [email protected].  Phone # +1.301.523.3285, + 1.301.442.0408
"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."  -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd US President)
I’ve had a lot of diversity in my childhood from my grandmother’s Hispanic heritage arriving in the US with her family from Peru at age eleven to my mother coming to the US from Russia in her twenties. I’ve had a diverse background not only from the international cultures in my family, but also the many activities I experienced from dance to sports and my early years in Montessori school up to third grade.  As a child, I was afraid to try anything new that would take me out of my comfort zone.  Whether it was climbing up the ladder to a 25-foot slide at the playground when I was four years old or playing sports.  My parents told me at an early age that I needed to have an activity outside of school.  Since I didn’t like sports, I decided to try dance, which required practice for a couple of hours every Saturday and lasted nine months ending in a final dance recital at the end of the school year.  I practiced every week and went through the routines so I could perfect my performance.  All things considered, I performed the dance routines as expected during the final recital.  
By age eight, after three years of dance school, my parents asked me if I wanted to try a sport since my interest was waning in dance.  My dad signed me up for the county ‘Sports Recreater,’ where they tried multiple sports to give kids taste of everything.  I spent most of the time in the corner afraid to play sports and it was a spectacular failure leaving me with no options for an activity after school.   After a few weeks of exploring options, we settled on tennis.  At first my hits were long, high, inaccurate, and often looked like I was playing ‘badminton,’ but I continued every week increasing my practice schedule as I got older, adding matches along with clinics and eventually working with private coaches averaging eight to 14 hours a week and making first singles as a freshmen in high school.  Why did I succeed in tennis after so many attempts at other sports and three years of dance, where I performed my routines as expected?  After all, I would’ve continued dance if there were no other options.
I began to challenge myself in everything I did, whether it was academics or tennis.  My desire to know more, answer test questions and homework thoroughly drove me to excel and get straight ‘A’s’ in school as a varsity sports athlete.  In my sophomore year, I had biology with a teacher that everyone complained about.  He gave four times the assignments of any other teacher, steered off the course curriculum with assignments delving into diabetes and other illnesses.  I spent hours during the week with detailed research, reviewing lengthy notes from class, and making sure I was more than prepared for tests.  I received an A in his class, just like I had in all my other classes, but I had to work four times harder to do it.  I always had an interest in biology, but it was through this experience that I developed a strong interest and passion for it.  Much like tennis, where I had to experiment with different sports and activities, even though I performed some of them well, I had to develop that passion and desire to be perfect, not only to achieve success, but for myself and my desire to be great in something that I loved!  It is my diverse experience from sports and academics to different cultures in my family that gives me the determination to realize my goals and passions of tomorrow!  I believe this is true for all of us.