A Crack in the Academy

APRIL

Tiny black wheels roll across the polished tiles of Zvartnots Airport.
That's a TUMI 19 Degree Worldwide Trip suitcase. $1,295.
Smart casual, entirely in black.
Loro Piana short-sleeved polo. $1,050.
Isaia trousers. $1,350.
NikeCourt Air Zoom Vapor Pro 2. $80.
Hermès Canvas Black Chevrons. $4,200.
Vacheron Constantin Fiftysix Day-Date. $33,400.
Persol PO0714. $440.

Leaving the airport, he and his assistant walk toward a Nardo Grey Audi RS 5. $100,000.
The assistant opens the trunk, places the suitcase inside, and hands him the keys.
Without any sign of haste, he gets behind the wheel.

AKSEL BATRIKEAN HAS ARRIVED IN ARMENIA.

I set my phone aside.

By now the news has spread everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Photos, videos, descriptions. Some have already calculated the value of his outfit. Others are describing him in the florid language of a nineteenth-century novel: of commanding height, finely built, broad of shoulder.

Others have moved on to analyzing his state of mind: he walks quickly; his jaw is tightly set; he isn't smiling.

But the commotion isn't accidental.

Aksel Batrikean is the only internationally renowned tennis player to come out of Armenia. His father's family, the Vard-Patrikians, were among the wealthy nobility of the Caucasian Viceroyalty. According to Forbes, his father, Paruyr Batrikean, is worth 1.2 billion dollars.

Aksel was born in Armenia but moved to England at the age of two. After his sixth birthday, his family's visits to Armenia stopped almost entirely. From then on, he spent his summers and winters at Europe's best tennis academies, mostly between London and Paris. By fifteen, he was already winning major junior tournaments.

Then, at twenty-one, he reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals. The world noticed. His career entered a new phase. That was the turning point in his career, and he soon signed with Matěj Dvořák, one of the most respected sports agents in the business.

With his new coaching team, he began preparing for the US Open. Then, during training, he suffered an MCL injury to his knee. Surgery became unavoidable, but it failed, and with it disappeared his chance to leave his name in the history of professional tennis.

The official announcement of his retirement spread first through the British sports media, then through the Armenian press that same day.

I found out from the teary-eyed girls on the courts. They told me I lived in a cave. I just don't go on the internet in the mornings. 

Except today.

Today is different. Today is my first practice with my new coach.

Twelve days ago, the postman rang our doorbell holding a white envelope with green ornamentation—the Academy's official letterhead. Inside, a single page. It didn’t say much, just that I had been assigned a new coach. Mr. Aksel Batrikean had recently joined the Academy's coaching staff, as the letter put it. 

I read the name twice. Once to confirm, twice to believe. Aksel. A coach? The same Aksel whose name I still hear whispered in the locker room like a spell? The same one who vanished from the courts last year, leaving the rest of us wondering if we’d just imagined him.

I don’t know what I felt first. Excitement, maybe. Then something closer to disbelief. A crackle of something live ran through my spine and made my shoulders jump.

I started listening differently after that. I leaned closer when the girls talked between drills, searching for anything—context, rumor, logic. But there was none. Just congratulations passed around like candy to the girls who, like me, were assigned to his group. Not a single word about what kind of coach he might be. Only that he was here. Back. And ours.

The Tennis Academy is a closed fortress. Its gates open only for the children of Armenia's wealthiest families.

Outside is a parking lot lined with expensive cars, most of them black. Just to the left of the entrance stands a long pavilion with a white canopy where drivers wait for the students they brought, climbing unhurriedly out of those same cars and settling into the shade. The freshest upper-class gossip always seems to find its way there first.

The gates are a deep jade green. They aren't especially welcoming to someone who comes from a different world, someone who can't greet them from behind the wheel of a luxury car.

I slipped into the Academy unnoticed and without a sound. You could almost say I came through a crack in its peach-colored wall.

It all started with a single match.

Four years ago, at the Ararat Tournament, fourteen-year-old April defeated fifteen-year-old Eveline, the number one player in the rankings. Somehow, that impossible victory earned me a four-year scholarship to the only—and by far the most coveted—tennis academy in Armenia. It gave me a place in the country's tennis elite, even if that place was invisible.

For almost four years, nobody really saw me.

I can count on one hand the people who've actually spoken to me: my coach Seda, fitness coach Gurgen, gym coach Anahit, Ashkhen and Hovo from the cafeteria, and the director—once, on the day I was admitted.

This invisible position I occupy expires on July 30. But with the close of my fourth scholarship year, a narrow path might open—if I can seize it.

This summer's National Championship carries more weight than usual. For the first time, the Tennis Federation will send the winner to compete in a prestigious junior event in England. For most players, it's simply the next step. For me, it's the only way forward.

Everything hinges on that match.

Three months from now, I will either cross the threshold into the next world of tennis, or be quietly exiled from it for good.

For months, my biggest fear had been losing the National. It was the only thing that could wake me up sharp at three in the morning and keep me staring at the ceiling.

Now the strangest thought had slipped into my head. Its name: Aksel.

By the time I was getting ready that morning, it had pushed everything else into the background. The closer it got to meeting him, the more my stomach seemed to swell. At this rate, I was sure I'd turn into a pufferfish before I ever made it to the Academy. The buzz surrounding his arrival that morning gave him a kind of celebrity aura I hadn't registered until then. 

Apparently, girls on tennis courts across the country had been dreaming of meeting him for years. Looking back, the signs had always been there. The photos from international tournaments they kept sending each other. The whispered conversations. The giggling in the locker room. I just hadn't paid much attention.

Now all of it came back at once, and with every new post announcing his arrival, I felt myself growing strangely uneasy.

Enough.

Time to forget Aksel's photographs, his brilliant career that ended too soon, and get ready for our first training session. 

A lot depends on today. First impressions matter. But more than that, it's about building something with my new coach. Every tennis player's progress depends on that partnership.

I still have a lot to learn, and without real progress, there's no winning the National. And if anyone knows something about progress and winning, it's Aksel.

I adjust my cap and sling my bag over my shoulder. "Dream freely. Act fearlessly." I hold on to mom's words like a talisman.

Three months from now, I'll play the biggest tournament of my life. The countdown starts today.

A win would finally prove that my place at the Academy, however invisible, was earned. I get that inequality has always been part of being human. But I can't shake the belief that everyone deserves a fair shot. Right now, I have mine. The same chance to train as the children of the wealthiest families in the country. The same chance to prove I deserve to go to England.