The school offers various sports options that students can select and practice that particular sport for the entire academic year. For the academic year 2019-2020, I had opted for table tennis. I am always interested in learning new sports  that I haven’t played before. I used to play lawn tennis and used to be one of my favorite sports and therefore I was enthusiastic about learning table tennis. The school provided us with decent rackets, balls and a sufficient sized venue and a coach to aid our learning. There were goals that were set which I wanted to achieve. I wanted to learn table tennis up to a satisfactory level. Also, one of the aims was to remain physically active during the school hours.

LO1 : Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

Because I was familiar with lawn tennis, I knew what are the strengths and weaknesses and the areas where I needed to work. As a base, I knew the basic grip, as well as basic backhand and forehand shots. However, it was quite difficult to transit between table tennis and lawn tennis. This was the biggest weakness since the power, accuracy, scale and height of shots, everything was completely new for me. The realization of my weaknesses was very helpful since I knew where I needed the coaches help.

LO2 : Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

The biggest challenge I faced during my table tennis classes was that I could not continue my game for a longer period of time and lost points in a long game. This was a problem as most of my friends had more experience in table tennis, since I was knew to the sport, so I used to often lose matches. To overcome the challenge, I practiced on the machine that the school already had.

LO4 : Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Being committed and giving enough time for table tennis was very challenging as a lot of times we had submissions of different subjects and even unit tests so I needed to give enough time to both. There were also meetings with teachers for various reasons. Being committed was especially important for me since I was knew to the sport so I needed extra practice compared to my friends. It took time, however I was able to be committed to playing table tennis by the utilization of my free slots. I was good at planning and following the plans so I used it to my benefit

LO5 : Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.

In table tennis, it was important that I worked with my friends in two ways. firstly, during the times of doubles matches, I need to collaborate well with my friends to ensure that we lose minimal points and turn out to be victorious. It was also beneficial for me to collaborate with my friends so that I could learn from because as said, many of my friends were more experienced and played better than me

After 6-8 months of showing commitment and passion towards learning the sport, I have seen a great difference in what I knew and what I know. Throughout the course of these months, I have been able to achieve the goals that I had set and have also overcame a lot of weaknesses I had in the sport during the starting days.