By Brennan Nick

In March’s BNP Paribas Open, the top tennis players from around the world all compete, with the goal of winning the tennis tournament and the prize money that comes with it.

I, along with many others, was given the unique opportunity to be a ball kid for this Indian Wells international tennis tournament, a tournament attended by people such as Serena Williams and Roger Federer. As ball kids, we get unique opportunities to see the behind-the-scenes occurrences of the tournament. We go through the tunnels that the players go through; we are the ones who give the player the balls to be autographed and hit into the stands; and we’re the ones who are sent to get a player’s racket to be re-strung. This gives us ample opportunity to see the top players of the world up close. It is like being the water-boy for the NFL or NBA. Even when we’re on one of our one-hour breaks, we get to experience the atmosphere of the tournament, talk with friends there, and we even get $18 worth of free food per shift. A normal shift for us consists of going to the ball kid tent, completely fitted with water, some food, and a ping-pong table. We’re then told which court we’ll be on. We’re on court duty typically for one to one-and-a-half hours, and then we have roughly  45-minute breaks until we go on again. This pattern is repeated for six hours until the end of our shift, when we return to the tent to be checked out before we leave.

The results of the tournament–the winner of the Men’s Singles was Juan Martin del Potro after a dramatic battle with Roger Federer in the finals. The winner of Women’s Singles was Naomi Osaka from Japan who handily defeated Daria Kasatkina. The winners of Women’s Doubles were Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina, while the winners of Men’s Doubles were John Isner and Jack Sock.

 Editor: Shelby Armor