From lobbing tennis balls as a kid to winning two state championship titles, senior TJ Shanahan has grown up to become the No. 1 ranked tennis player in Oklahoma. Shanahan quickly fell in love with the sport after his father introduced him to it. 

“My dad’s a tennis coach,” Shanahan said. “He’s from Australia. He grew up playing tennis, and so I guess it was kind of passed on to me from basically since birth, really, since the first memory I had. It’s always been about tennis.”

Playing tennis for 14 years, Shanahan found how essential tennis was to his life. 

“I think tennis is a little more special just because it’s yourself,” Shanahan said. “It’s just you. It’s just you and your willingness to fight and so I think that makes tennis special and a little different from other sports.”

Only one USTA Sportsmanship Award is presented. Shanahan was anonymously voted by 64 players and 10 coaches who thought that he displayed sportsmanship the best. 

“I’m just really blessed and really honored to be able to receive that award because it’s a good reflection of my character and what I believe in,” Shanahan said. “It’s just really special to me, and I’m obviously just very, very happy to be able to get that award.”

Learning from professional athletes, Shanahan paid close attention to how they act and what it means to have manners in sports. 

“A lot of people call tennis the gentleman’s sport, and it kind of comes from the roots of just being a good sport and being respectful,” Shanahan said.

Aside from showing what sportsmanship is like, Shanahan shares the mindset one should have if starting tennis for the first time. 

“The first thing is don’t expect too much for yourself,” Shanahan said. “Making mistakes is part of the game. Tennis is a sport where you can make less mistakes. The more you play, the more you kind of mature, and the more you realize that the less errors and less mistakes I make, the better I may be.”