the gentle fiction of volition
Like most sports academies, E.T.A. maintains the gentle fiction that 100% of its students are enrolled at their own ambitious volition and not that of, say for instance, their parents
Context
The institution's founding lie about whose ambition these bodies serve. E.T.A. "maintains the gentle fiction that 100% of its students are enrolled at their own ambitious volition and not that of... their parents" — the tennis-parents and stage-mothers whose dreams the kids are really giving their childhoods to. Underneath the whole regimen sits an unspoken question of consent: the developing bodies are volunteered by adults, and the academy runs on politely pretending otherwise. The child chose this, everyone agrees to say.