 My name is Samantha Martinelli and I'm currently ranked number four in the country in junior tennis. My dad's name is Angelo Martinelli and he is a lieutenant in the Denver Police Department. I work in District One which is Northwest Denver. I've been playing tennis since I was three years old. I started tournaments around six and in that time I probably won over 50 titles. She picked up a racket that was about as big as she was and went to the backboard and started hitting into that. From the beginning I just really loved it. She started playing and immediately just took off to the top around the Denver area. This wasn't just something for fun like this could be something bigger. My parents kind of realized years ago that if I was going to reach a different level and get to the scholarships that I wanted to get in college or be able to play professionally I would have to get out of Colorado. I'm at the No Quit Tennis Academy in Las Vegas, Nevada and I've been there since I was 13. We had to sit down to make a decision to send her off to a family. We didn't know. It's a host family out there. It was horrible. It was, you know, you get a short time to spend with your kids. I missed a lot of Christmases, a lot of thanksgivings but it was all for the greater plan and in my opinion it was always in college. In fall 2017 I will be attending Yale. I just verbally committed like a couple weeks ago and I'm very very excited about it. I'm forever grateful for the sacrifices my mom and dad both made for me to be able to play tennis. I wouldn't call it a sacrifice. I think it's just something you do as a parent and it makes me feel proud to be able to do it for her. I don't, Sammy's the kind of person I'll never have to worry about. She's going to keep going and keep going up.