2024 Travers Winner!

~Kevin Yu, Class of 2028

Chapter 1: The Offer

It was just a normal day at Wimbledon when I was offered to play one point against Roger Federer. Okay, I know that sounds really crazy. I mean Roger Federer is the GOAT of tennis. The reason I was chosen was because I was the number one ranked 10 year old in all of tennis. Even though I was number one in my age group I still got butterflies in my stomach. I had thoughts like What will happen if I fail horribly, what will happen if I miss an easy ball, what if I disappoint everyone. As I stepped on to the grass court I couldn’t help but think I am so lucky for this amazing opportunity, I shouldn’t take it for granted. Now I knew what I was going to do with this opportunity. I didn’t care what other people thought. I was going to try my hardest. I signaled one of the ball boys to give me a couple balls. I headed over to the deuce side after I received the balls. I put two balls in my right pocket and I left one ball in my hand. I do my serve routine (bouncing the ball ten times) before tossing the ball up, and smashing it. The audience started chanting: “KEVIN! KEVIN! KEVIN!” The ball landed right in the middle of the service box. Federer hit the ball back to me for which I smashed as hard I could down the line. I noticed Federer was in a weak position so I headed to the net. I waited for the ball, and when it came to me I overhead smashed it to the opposite side that Federer was standing on. Federer sprinted as fast as he could but he just couldn’t make it. I had just won a point against the GOAT of tennis!      

Chapter 2: Space Training

After I beat Federer I was really popular world wide. I was known as “The Prodigy” so when I did almost anything in public people exclaimed: “It’s the prodigy, it’s the prodigy!” A couple months after I beat Federer NASA had sent me an invitation to play tennis for an ad on the moon for 10.5 million dollars. A huge reason they did this was because they wanted people to come to the moon. The more people that come to the moon the more money they make. NASA’s slogan was “The prodigy played a sport on the moon, which means so can you!” At first I thought this was a crazy idea. After thinking about the offer I decided to go. Ok, I know there is a big chance I might not return home, but I wanted to set the record for being the first person to play a sport on the moon. The scheduled date for me to go to the moon was 1/3/24. It was currently 11/1/23. I had two months to train to go to the moon. The two months flew by fast. I had learned all sorts of things from how to sit in zero gravity to learning how to evacuate the spacecraft if needed to. I woke up on 1/3/24 and got dressed. A limo from NASA came to pick me up. I hopped in the limo to find some snacks and a couple TVs. As the limo headed through the gate and into the launching pad parking lot, I couldn’t help but realize how much things I have accomplished at 10 years old. I have accomplished more than most humans would in their entire life span. I stepped out of my limo and headed over to the locker room. I changed into my space suit, put on my helmet, put my space boots on, and put my space leggings on. After I changed I hopped onto the rocket ship. Inside were a couple engineers, in case things go south, and a doctor, in case someone gets sick. 5 minutes later I hear the people controlling the launch countdown from 10. “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff! As the rocket took off I heard a rumbling sound below me. As we entered space I started to hear some unusual noises. I realized that some space junk had crashed into us. We needed to repair the rocket fast.

Chapter 3: Repairing the rocket

The rocket started to wobble and shake. The people watching us at NASA instructed us on how to repair the rocket. The engineers followed all the steps but we still were shaking and wobbling. Nothing was working! We were all panicking, especially me. The rocket suddenly started to spin out of control! The engineers were all pushing some buttons trying to gain control of the rocket. Once the rocket stopped spinning so much the engineers gained control of the rocket. Once they gained control the engineers fixed the rocket and realized that some part of the rocket had a loose screw so they just screwed it back. After the rocket ship was fixed it was much more calm. Outside I could see the earth and it was big! I admired the blueness of the seas and oceans and the green of the land and trees. I had just realized that a couple hours had already gone by. Since I had spent so much time looking outside the window at stars and the earth I didn’t realize how much time had gone by. I checked the timer to see how many more hours until we landed on the moon. On the timer it read “2:15:32:22” which means 2 days 15 hours 32 minutes and 22 seconds until we land on the moon. 

Chapter 4: The Space Base

2 days 15 hours 32 minutes and 22 seconds later, we landed on the moon. I hopped out of the capsule and brought my tennis gear with me. The moon was way bigger than I had imagined. In the movies they made it look small but in real life it was way bigger. I headed into the space base and went to my room. There were already some people in the base. There were astronauts, engineers, scientists, and the camera guys that were going to film the ad. There were also a couple kids my age. I hopped on my bed and put my gear down. The tennis court was inside. It was the size of a Wimbledon tennis court. “CRASH!” Outside I saw loads of big rocks fall on the moon. The alarm went off and we headed into a secure room built for things like this. Hours later we came out of the room and went back to doing our things. In the room I had met a couple people. One of the kids my age was a girl named Kayla. Also one of the kids my age was a boy named Jayson. There were other kids my age but these kids were now my friends. They were the son of an engineer and a daughter of a scientist. I was hungry so I asked a scientist if the kitchen had some snacks. She said that she had just had some Doritos and it was full of snacks. I headed into the kitchen and opened the snack cabinet. I was hoping to find some snacks but when I looked inside I saw nothing. I looked in every compartment of the kitchen but there was nothing. Was I going to starve to death on the moon?

Chapter 5: Space Thief

The thought of starving to death was terrifying and alarming. If there was a space thief on the space base what else would he do? I alerted everybody in the space base that there was a space thief in the space base. The good thing about notifying everyone was that we all were on alert for anything suspicious. The bad thing about notifying everyone was that the thief now knew that we were on the lookout for them. Jayson, Kayla, and we decided we were going to become detectives. We split up and started searching for clues. We agreed in an hour we would come back and discuss what we found. I went around searching for clues but I found nothing. An hour later we came back and discussed what we found. We all found nothing. I went into everyone’s room but there was nothing suspicious. I was losing hope until I saw something red under my bed. It was an apple! There were so many snacks and fruits under my bed. The thief tried to frame me. The good news was that we weren’t going to starve to death. The bad news was the thief was still on the loose. I looked around and saw some footsteps. I didn’t know who’s footsteps they belonged to but at least it was a clue. I told Kayla and Jayson about the thief framing me and the footsteps. They agreed the thief had pretty small feet when I showed them the footsteps. We tried to think about who the criminal was but we couldn’t think of anyone with that size of feet. Since we were stuck we decided to go chill. We ate some snacks then we played some video games on the TV. Then I ate dinner and I drifted off into my dream.

Chapter 6: Uncovering The Criminal

Ding, ding, ding! As I snapped out of my dream due to my alarm clock, I suddenly realized that the footsteps in my room had to be from a kid. The dream had been a message. That means the criminal probably told some random kid to walk in here. Not only did the criminal try to frame me, but he tried to frame some little innocent kid. I could not just sit here and watch the thief do so many bad things. I headed over to Kayla’s room to wake her up. Surprisingly, she was already awake. “Couldn’t sleep?” I asked. “Yeah, I’ve been working on the case and I’ve got a new lead” She replied. “There are security cameras here so we could review the footage.” “That’s genius!” I exclaim. We walk over to the security room and what we see is surprising. Not only were the computers gone, everything inside the room had disappeared! We frantically searched the room but we found nothing. The thief was one step ahead of us. Then I had a sudden thought. “Wait! The thief couldn’t have known that we were coming this way, unless he heard us somehow!” “Now that’s genius!” Kayla compliments me. We went to every room and everybody was still sleeping. That meant one thing, Kayla’s room had been bugged. I told Kayla my thought of her room being bugged. After Kayla agreed we went to search her room. We checked everywhere, the ceiling, the walls, the closets, and the cabinets but we found nothing. Then I realized where the microphone was. It was under her bed. I looked under her bed and sure enough it was there. The only person who could crawl under her bed was a kid. That meant the criminal was a kid. A kid would probably walk into my room, but they sure wouldn’t bug someone’s room because someone was bribing them. The criminal was a kid. We started thinking about who would do this and who walked into Kayla’s room recently. “Jayson!” I scream.

Chapter 7: Returning Back to Earth

It turned out I was right, Jayson was the space thief. It was his footsteps and him bugging Kaylas room. Kayla and I both felt very betrayed. Jayson immediately got arrested and he was sent back to earth to go to prison. I played tennis for the ad and I had my last dinner on the moon. Then I returned home on a 15 hour flight. When I arrived on earth people were waiting for me. When I stepped outside the rocket. People were cheering for me and chanting my name. I felt super good inside. But one thing was for sure, I was definitely not going back to the moon any time soon.