Alexandria Magee is in her eighth year playing tennis, and the Columbus teenager has entered the United States Tennis Association’s National Junior Tennis and Learning essay contest just about every year.
Magee didn’t always try her hardest, though.
“In years past, I kind of have just submitted the essay just to submit it,” she said.
Last July was different. Magee made the commitment to give the 2022 contest her best. She took the time. She put her heart into it.
But months went by, and Magee heard nothing.
“I was like, ‘Well, if they haven’t gotten back to me by now, then I must have lost,’” she said.
The Columbus High School sophomore was shocked when, in October, her mother Jennifer delivered good news: Magee was named Mississippi’s contest winner, one of nine state representatives in the USTA Southern region. There were nearly 150 entries across the nine states.
Magee and her mother earned an all-expenses-paid trip to Atlanta for the USTA Southern Annual Meeting on Jan. 14, where the contest winners were honored. Her achievement was also celebrated by USTA Mississippi.
“I felt really special when I was in Atlanta,” Magee said. “I felt really important and really special.”
For the essay, Magee was asked to write about whether tennis developed positive qualities like teamwork, sportsmanship and confidence as well as how tennis could help her achieve her dreams.
She knew quite well how much tennis could help build her confidence.
For the first five years or so of her career in the sport, Magee couldn’t control her anger on the court. Lose a point or a set, and her temper would flare.
“Once you go into a mindset that you’re mad on the court, you play mad,” she said. “Nine times out of 10, you’re going to lose if you play mad. That really did affect me, and it affected my whole day. I would come home mad after a match and my mom would try to comfort me, but I would still be mad because I had lost that match.”
Coach Vanita Phinisey, the executive director of Golden Triangle Tennis, helped explain to the competitive Magee she wasn’t going to win every time she stepped onto the court.
For a young player, it took time to understand.
“I realized that there are people better than me,” Magee said. “There are people who have been playing longer than me.”
Magee is in her second year with the Falcons’ varsity team, where she currently plays singles.
Her sophomore season gets underway Tuesday.
“I’m very excited to get back out there and start playing some matches,” Magee said. “It’s a new season full of new opportunities, and I feel like I’m much better than I was last year, so I’m very excited for that.”
Once the tennis season begins, the sport will be one of several obligations occupying Magee’s time.
Volleyball in the fall provides little conflict with the high school tennis season, but theater often happens at the same time.
Magee is a skilled performer who played Jo March, the lead role, in “Little Women.” Her favorite part by far, though, was that of Maleficent in Disney’s “Descendants.”
It’s tough for Magee to strike a balance between her favorite sport and her other interests, but she knows where her priorities lie.
“Sometimes I can’t go to all the tennis practices like I would like because I have theater practice,” she said. “Those are other things that I do really like, but tennis has always just been No. 1 for me.”
Despite having 2 1/2 more years of school to go, Magee already knows what she wants to do for a living, too.
“My whole life I’ve kind of known I wanted to be a lawyer, but I didn’t know what kind of lawyer I wanted to be,” she said. “For a minute, I wanted to be a corporate lawyer because I heard they made lots of money, but something didn’t sit right with me about that.
“In 2020, when all the injustice was going on, I knew I wanted to help, and I didn’t know how. Ever since then, I told myself that I wanted to be a civil rights attorney.”
Magee knows achieving that goal will take two things above all else: “patience and school.”
As usual, she has a plan.
Magee said she’d like to attend the University of Alabama for her undergraduate degree, then attend law school at the University of Mississippi.
If she continues to pour her time and commitment into making that happen, it will.
Just look at her award-winning essay for proof of that hard work.
“I guess it paid off, because I won,” Magee said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 24 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
