At the beginning of the summer Shelbey Johnson found out there was a sport she wasn't good at. This was not OK for the Poplar Bluff senior.
"I'm naturally super competitive. I was like, if I come out here and blow this I'm going to be so mad. I can't come out here and look like a fool," Johnson said. "Volleys weren't that hard for me, but my forehand was absolutely terrible. I could not hit a ball to save my life."
Johnson is a soccer player first and foremost and set a single-season team record with 35 goals as a junior last year, which broke her sophomore record of 24, which broke a 2008 record held by Chelsea Garner. Johnson had seven hat tricks as a junior and scored six goals in a game against Liberty-Mountain View.
Then her friend Sara Holland, who holds the No. 1 spot on the Mules tennis team, talked Johnson into coming out for a sport she'd never played competitively.
Holland told her she was a natural athlete, she'd pick it up just fine despite the fact that soccer and tennis are wildly different sports and require wildly different skill sets.
"I was like, 'Sure why not.' It would give me something to do," said Johnson, who added the whole conversation lasted maybe 5 minutes. "I literally just came out here for funs."
With the exception of a few tennis camps as a kid, Johnson was starting from scratch.
"It was really difficult at first, I'm not going to lie," she said. "I would get super down on myself and frustrated with myself."
Her forehand was bad, her backhand was bad, her serve was bad, and the super-competitive athlete in her needed to be good at this thing. Not just better, good.
She'd go out to the courts and work on her serve for an hour, get frustrated, go home, only to be back on the courts serving soon after.
Johnson split time throughout the summer between soccer, tennis and work, often getting help from friends and family who played tennis in high school. Soon she found soccer and tennis had some overlapping skill sets after all.
"My advantage with this is in soccer, one of my biggest advantages is my footwork, and if you don't have the footwork on the court there's no way to hit the ball back," Johnson said. "So some of the soccer stuff is overflowing into tennis, as ironic as that seems."
Finally it started clicking and Johnson earned the No. 2 spot on the varsity team, and even plays doubles with Holland.
"Typically, I'm not too interested in a senior coming out for the first time. They are going to be trying to learn the game," Poplar Bluff coach Charles Harper said. "Just being on varsity, top six and making a contribution I would have been happy. Her playing solid at five or six, that would have exceeded my expectations, really."
Johnson has also found that soccer has helped build her endurance for tennis while tennis has improved her footwork and agility in soccer.
"My touches have gotten a lot better and sharper and you could tell that on the field," she said.
On top of that, she's trying to take camaraderie from the court to the field. Johnson said the tennis team is more supportive and complementary of each other than the soccer team. It has become one of her favorite parts of playing tennis and she'd like to transfer some of that into soccer.
"The girls are rubbing off on me and I'm becoming just a naturally better person because of it," Johnson said.
Poplar Bluff (2-1) took its first loss of the season Monday, losing to Dexter 7-2. Johnson and Holland won their doubles match 8-6 against Dexter's No. 1 doubles team of Morgan Aldridge and Jadyn Northcutt.
"I'm really happy with No. 1 doubles because that was a hard-hitting pair from Dexter. They had our girls on the ropes several times but they held on and took them," Harper said.
Johnson lost to Rachel Singh 8-2 in singles play.
Caitlin Dollins defeated Hannah Bollinger 8-4 to get the Mules their other win.
Holland was tied at 8-all in No. 1 singles before Aldridge won the tie-breaker 7-0. Dexter's Jadyn Northcutt won No. 3 singles 8-6 over Kaitlyn Lloyd. Abbie Dorton (No. 4) and Malia Cook (No. 5) both won 8-4 over Poplar Bluff's Mya White and Annaleese Williams.
In No. 2 doubles, Singh and Cook beat Lloyd and White 8-4. Dorton and Bollinger won 8-2 over Williams and Dollins in No. 3 doubles.