Tennis player Bella Hanna-Barofsky is a senior at La Salle and expresses that her main goal for her last year of high school is to have fun and cherish every moment, because her time is almost up.

Since she was about five years old, Hanna-Barofsky has taken tennis lessons. “I hated it at first,” she said, so she started to play soccer and basketball instead. 

When she broke her hip from playing soccer, she also couldn’t play basketball because of her injury. She then decided to “shift and try tennis just to see what would happen, and I ended up making varsity sophomore year,” she said.

Hanna-Barofsky has had a couple of different coaches in the past, but the one who stands out the most is Annie Miller, someone who has been with her since day one besides her mom, and has “seen me grow as a tennis player,” she said.

Hanna-Barofsky’s mom is “someone who will always encourage me to do my best and know when I need help and know how to help me,” she said. “She’s just a kind person to be around.” 

Overall, Hanna-Barofsky’s biggest challenge in tennis is her mindset. She said that it’s hard “when you’re either down [a] couple games or even a set, it’s hard to get your mindset back in the swing of it.”

She says her team is like family because they’re always there for one another whenever needed and there to help lift each other. Even if tennis is an individual sport, every person “is a component of the team,” Hanna-Barofsky said. “We are always there to encourage each other.”

As captain of this year’s varsity tennis team, she wants to “help my teammates be their best and try their best,” she said. “I feel like now as [the] captain, I have the role of being a leader and being someone who can help them.” If her teammates need anything, she wants to be the person who can be there for them.

Outside of sports, Hanna-Barofsky volunteers with two organizations called Mercy Teams and Martha Mercado’s ministry to the Latino Working Poor that she got into through her church, Our Lady of the Lake, in eighth grade. She has continued to volunteer for service hours since, making lunches for people in need or serving breakfast.

She also plays the piano and paints, which she started with her parents’ encouragement at the age of seven, but has over time become more interested in these activities. 

Looking to the future, if Hanna-Barofsky doesn’t end up playing tennis in college, she wants to give club tennis a try and see where it takes her.