I am able to have a chance to observe and compare gameplay and style of different tennis players in different age groups both locally and internationally.

Generally, most 12 year olds would use lob in their game play to take advantage of their opponents’ short height. As they progress in age the ideal game play should be deep, paced and heavy spin or strong flat balls. In other countries, this is how it is but in the Philippines, game style for many, not all, is stuck in slow spin, or lob, prioritizing win over development. And this makes winning a terrible teacher.

A win is a win and it is a record. But a scoreboard is not a mirror. It tells you who won, not how, and certainly not whether the game you played today is the game that will still work at the next level or the one after that.

The lob that wins a 14-and-under local tournament is the same lob that gets punished at 16, when opponents are taller, faster, and have learned to put away anything short. The spin that frustrates a Filipino peer becomes a free setup ball for a Malaysian or Indonesian junior who has been trained to step in and drive. What worked becomes a liability. The player doesn’t suddenly become worse the level simply exposes what was always missing.

This is the quiet cost of prioritizing the score. A scoreboard tells you who won. It does not tell you why, or whether it will hold. A player who wins by making the other person uncomfortable has learned one thing: avoidance. A player who wins by executing, by hitting the right ball at the right time with conviction has learned something that travels with them.

Development asks a different question than competition does. Competition asks: did you win today? Development asks: are you becoming someone who can win at the next level, and the one after that? These are not always the same question, and in junior tennis, they are often in direct conflict.

The problem is that coaches, parents, and players feel the score. They do not feel the development gap, not yet. It shows up later, quietly, when the player plateaus and no one can quite explain why someone so experienced seems to have run out of game.

What you build at 14 is what you have at 18. The habits, the instincts, the shots you trust under pressure, these are not things you add later. They are either in the body or they are not. And the body learns from what it does repeatedly in the moments that matter, not from what it practices in the safety of a drill.

This is why courage is not just a character virtue in tennis. It is a technical requirement. The player who never goes for the big forehand in a match never really has one not in the way that counts. The shot has to be attempted, missed, adjusted, and attempted again under real pressure before it belongs to them.

But courage alone is not enough. Tennis is also a problem-solving sport, played in real time, against an opponent who is actively trying to take away what you do best. The player who has learned to drive the ball with conviction still has to reckon with the lober who refuses to give them pace, or the pusher who turns their aggression into errors. Playing your game is the foundation but the complete player knows when the match is asking for something different, and has the presence of mind to give it. Adaptability is not the opposite of conviction. It is what conviction looks like when the situation changes.

So when is winning a terrible teacher? When the win requires nothing of you. When it rewards avoidance over execution, safety over growth, the score over the game being built underneath it. Winning teaches well only when it is hard-earned, when it demands that you find a shot you weren’t sure you had, solve a problem you hadn’t seen before, stay in a point longer than is comfortable. That kind of winning builds something. The other kind just flatters you.

Play your game, win or lose. Not because winning doesn’t matter. But because the game you build now is the only game you’ll have when it matters.

I have seen how people pray. When I was young, we would go to Baclaran on Wednesdays and there I’d witness people walking on their knees, people who look very sad touching feet of saints. I got the impression that prayers are for sad people and people with problems.

Then here comes pastors and even Bo Sanchez, Mike Velarde on TV who would ask people raise their umbrellas, wave their bandanas and ask for money and healing. One time I was in a charismatic meeting and there was a pastor who would do slain in the spirit and people would fall on their back, some shaking and others fainting. Then at times I’d hear people say to religious people, Panay dasal mo, hindi naman nagbabago ugali mo.

The thing about prayer is that we think it must be heartfelt, sad, dramatic, or emotional to be effective. This is why when I first heard mass in the US as a teen I was surprised how joyful they sing the papuri song in English compared to how people sing it here, maawa ka, maawa ka with matching sad face. I think that’s a misconception, and it only makes prayer and evern praise harder for us. Another thing about prayer is that we expect an answer, because it is a conversation.

To a young boy like me, because of what I saw, prayer became mysterious and confusing; to a young teen, it became cheap. To an adolescent, it made God weird, it made God a genie, it made God transactional.

One lesson I wish I had learned earlier is that prayer is not measured by intensity of feeling. Tears are not proof of faith, just as dryness is not proof of God’s absence. Some of the sincerest prayers are spoken through joy, gratitude, boredom, confusion, the ordinary routines of life, or even silence. The saints often wrote about seasons when God seemed distant, yet they continued to pray. Prayer is not effective because we feel strongly; it is effective because God is present. What matters is not whether our hearts are stirred, but whether our hearts are willing.

This is why a sharing by Dennis a few months ago struck me. He spoke about his grandmother, whom he would often see praying. Looking back, I think what moved me was not what she felt while praying, because no one could know that, but that thing which Dennis calls her posture of prayer: her faithfulness, her consistency, her willingness to keep turning toward God. Sometimes the deepest prayers are not dramatic moments but ordinary acts of showing up before God day after day.

As I mature in my faith, which I hope I am, I now understand what they mean when they say prayer is a conversation: converse and convert. To converse is to talk to God, to be grateful and to ask for petitions. This is where majority of us are at. The second is where our prayer life should bring us – convert, and that entails listening and hearing in quiet solitude. It may be in your room or in a chapel as advised by my spiritual director. But it requires that we know the God of the Bible from priests or theologians so that we do not project our biases.
In the convert part, this is where prayer teaches us to hope, because in prayer we beg and ask and wait for the answer, and in prayer we practice faith in God who we do not see, and in prayer we become charitable because we ask not just for us but for others as well. So prayer fully converts us when we accept God’s will when we do not get what we want and when we let go of control.

Those two words, converse and convert, share the same Latin root, vertere, “to turn.” To converse is to turn toward someone in speech; to convert is to be turned around, turned into something else. We can say that prayer is turning to God as we are turned around by God. And this converse and convert is what can turn our prayer from commanding the genie-god to listening to the Biblical-God who longs for our ears and our hearts.

I felt the truth of this most clearly in a season of my life I’d rather not detail here. I have spoken and listened to God many times, I poured my heart out and stayed quiet trying to listen to words. No words were heard, no burning bush, but there were grace and peace in my heart after I let him do his will and not mine.

I think back to those scenes from my childhood: knees on the pavement of Baclaran, sad faces, hands reaching for the feet of saints. Those were postures of begging, and begging is real, but it is half of the conversation. What I couldn’t see as a boy was the other half, the turning that happens while praying in silence, where nothing visible changes and yet something does.

So I end this by encouraging you in your quiet moments of prayer with God: as you turn around, tell Him—
I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you only hold me tight
We’ll be holding on forever

So Turn around.

I loved the Masters of the Universe live-action movie. It brought me right back to my 1980s childhood.

This is the kind of message we don’t often see in movies today—the classic 80s “never say die” spirit, where the protagonist faces impossible challenges and transforms through courage, determination, and sheer willpower.

Last June 12, we watched the movie as a family. We do this from time to time whenever there’s a good film showing in theaters. Movie tickets now cost around ₱600 per person, a far cry from the ₱25 tickets I remember growing up. But hey, this one was worth it.

In the middle of the movie, Iuri even took a photo of me completely absorbed in what was happening on screen. The film had its dull moments—some scenes felt longer than necessary, with too much dialogue. But then again, if you grew up watching cartoons in the 80s, you know there were plenty of dialogues and scenes that could have been edited down too.

One thing I appreciated was how the director managed to bring the cartoon’s humor into the live-action adaptation. Skeletor’s laugh and comedic moments felt authentic and captured a side of the character that many of his villains never quite matched.

The best part, of course, was when He-Man raised his sword and shouted, “By the power of Grayskull… I have the power!” That gave me goosebumps.

It was a fun movie that took me back to my childhood. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I certainly enjoyed it. In fact, when the movie ended, I raised my water bottle and shouted, “I have the power!”