How is Simona Halep a story to be used by schools and parents?

Although I could not watch the entire game where Simona Halep defeated Serena Williams at the Wimbledon final, I became very excited about the possibility that she could be the winner of Wimbledon 2019. As I could see in my social media feeds yes the dream came true, Simona Halep won the tournament making the entire country happy here in Romania.

This is a success story which should be looked into by all schools and parents especially here in Romania.

On one of Simona’s tweets in May 2019 she posted a photo of hers with the following quote 

“Big things happen when you dream big.”

It is a story of a Romanian girl who was born in the shores of Black Sea in Constanta on September 27, 1991. Everything started normal. She was a girl named after her grandmother, a girl who didn’t want to eat when it was dinner time, a girl who had various conflicts with other children as part of their games.

When she was at the age of 4, one day she was waiting and watching her brother practising tennis. At one point she really got bored and decided to pick up the racket and to try herself. This was the turning point in her life. Then she always had that racket during her trainings, games and it even became in her dreams. She was lucky to have a supporting family which sounds random to many of us. However by supporting they meant to risk their financial stability, to own bank credits without knowing what would happen if Simona would not succeed in tennis. Her luck was still with her when she was at the age of 16 and found a sponsor to cover all her expenses for various tournaments which were essential in her career.

In one of her interviews Simona would say the following lines “ I don’t know exactly what age I was, I was going to tournaments and I was ashamed to warm myself up before the matches. I was warming myself up in a corner or behind a building. I was a very shy child…”

In the year of 2008 her career started to glimpse however not long ago in October 2018 she was diagnosed with a herniated disk. Which for many people made it difficult to believe that she would win another big tournament in tennis. Simona knew that she dreamed big therefore she did everything possible and came back as soon as she could on the tennis courts. In June 2019 after a tournament in Paris she would post the following tweet “  It was an honour to play here as defending champion. I wasn’t good enough today, but I will come back stronger.”

After seeing her happiness after winning Wimbledon, I was thinking on how I should use this amazing success story raising my daughter and also with my students. Here are the 5 things which I came up with.

1- Sometimes allow your children to get bored to discover what they like. Remember in Simona’s story it all started at her brother’s training.

2- Trust in your child. Not for them to succeed in what they are doing. But for them to know that they have supporting parents therefore they can dream as big as they want.

3- Hard work opens gates. I don’t think it was just luck how Simona found that sponsor at the age of 16. This was how her hard work and dedication paid off.

4- A child being shy does not mean that they can not be successful in life.

5- Success is a long journey, filled with many obstacles and failures. Stop trying to prepare the path for your children, prepare your children to take any path they would like to take.