COLUMBUS -- From the tennis courts of Columbus to those at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, Tyson Thomas has played on them.
His tennis game has taken the 2000 Columbus High School graduate around the globe.
Thomas estimates he has played and instructed tennis in at least a dozen countries, on hard, clay and grass courts. Not bad for someone who didn’t really start playing competitively until high school.
When he was young, Thomas played tennis sporadically, and not really for the competition. But he decided to try his hand at it as a student at CHS, and later at the University of Nebraska-Kearney.
It was in college that he got his first taste of traveling outside of the country when he studied abroad in Sodertorns Hogskola, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2003.
After finishing his college career and earning a degree in psychology, Thomas signed on with a company called PBI (Peter Burwash International), a touring tennis company. Through PBI, Thomas’ first stop was in Palo Alto, Calif. He served there as a tennis instructor and counselor to campers at Stanford Summer Camp for two months.
He spent the next several months traveling around California, teaching clinics and giving private lessons, among other duties.
Thomas, 26, continued with the company, traveling around the United States, South Korea and China as part of the PBI Tennis Show, which included playing tennis and comedic acting.
His most recent stops were in Abu Dhabi and Maldives where he was a tennis director. He came home this summer and has been the YMCA tennis director.
Teaching in foreign lands was a challenge with the language barrier between himself and his students, but Thomas said sports are visual, so that made teaching a bit easier. He said his travels have been a great eye-opener
to his views on the world because of the people he met.
“Whether it was a mother in California, a Russian businessman in Abu Dhabi, or a young child in Beijing, I realized how much we’re all the same. After we’re able to look past religion and celebrate cultural differences, it was obvious that my 25-year-old Muslim associate and I had as much in common personally as I do with many of my American friends,” Thomas said.
Thomas isn’t planning on putting his passport away just yet either. Because of his positive experiences he had while traveling, he decided to join the Peace Corp. and will depart for a 27-month commitment in February.
He feels his journeys through PBI have served him well in broadening his outlook on people. Even though the focus of the travels were on teaching others the skill of tennis, he said he walked away with the greatest gift of his life, one of a better understanding of other people and their cultures.
“I’ve learned to look past an individual’s flag and the God they worship and instead spend time learning about that person. Only after releasing all prejudice have I been able to see people for who they are, rather than what other people have said about them,” Thomas said.
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