And to quote Tracy Chapman – I lose my head, from time to time. I make a fool out of myself, in matters of the Tennis errr heart, heart, heart.
Where to begin? We lost to TST on Saturday 2-1 in a very bad way. It was sloppy play with no focus. There are two sides to every match and I must start with Kudos to TST and especially Ezra Felker. They have heart. Despite everything that happened, we had a sitter on match point in the final court that was hit into the net. It was really an impossible thing to have happen. I had already jumped up thinking the match was over because it was a miracle that the ball even came back over the net. Ezra essentially threw a racket at it and it somehow went over. We lost five match points in that final tiebreaker – unreal. I’m still grimacing from this set back. However, if we make Districts; it was a positive thing to have happen.
Next, we are dealing with a huge distraction which is making tennis not fun. Once this distraction is resolved I will give my readers full disclosure on what happened, my opinion and the result. Bottom line, I am not a happy camper and this is an unwelcome distraction.
I have learned that I may take tennis too seriously? Nah! I know that must be everyone’s immediate reaction. What is important is my family and my job. So as this episode comes full circle perhaps it’s a good thing because tennis is supposed to be fun and when it’s not it’s time to reevaluate.
So where are we going from here? We have to win Friday against the Kinetix Krushers or we don’t make districts. We will give it a full effort and I am confident we’ll give ourselves every opportunity to succeed in this match.
On the positive side, my Central PA (CPD) team played the Central team we defeated in Sectionals last year and this time I got to play. They have essentially the exact same team again except which is very impressive. I was scheduled to play #1 doubles which would have had me play their best team of Nicole Nickolaus and Ben Smith. I was informed as I walked on to the court that I was being switched to 3rd doubles because one of my teammates decided to adjust the lineup. I already lost to Nicole this year in 7.0 and I was thinking I would have some tough sledding ahead of me. I believe that Nicole/Ben is the best individual Mixed Doubles team in all of Middle States. Nicole is closer to 4.5 than 3.5 and Ben is just about the most talented athlete I’ve seen on a tennis court. Nicole/Ben won their court but we took the other two. My partner is Lesley Agnew and she is a great player too. She has a better serve and a better overhead than me and it’s a real pleasure to have the opportunity to play with her. She is also great at adjusting strategy. I played well for once and I was happy to win our court in a 3rd set tiebreaker against a super nice and very talented team. I learned after the match that the other team wanted my captain to play me on #1.
It’s crunch time. Time for our team to pull it together and come out on top. I believe in us. Adversity as long as it doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Enough talking… Bring it Krushers.
