Tennis Season!

For those of you who don't know, Roger Federer is probably one of the greatest players of all time. AMAZING. Tennis season started on March 10th. It will be my last season playing tennis! I've been playing for four years, and I always look forward to this time of year. Maybe it's the cute tennis outfits, the competitiveness, and team bonding experiences. Oh and we can't forget, the infamous TP at the end of the year...

I've been playing tennis since I was five. I first fell in love with tennis at one of my friends' houses and made my parents sign me up for lessons away. My mom made me take dance for four years but I absolutely hated it and decided that "I didn't want to be a ballerina". So I opted for the next best thing which was sports. I started to compete in actual tournaments at the age of 11 or 12. When I was 13 and 14 I traveled all over the Midwest to partcipate in tournaments like the Supers and Endorsements. I've played in several local tournaments as well.

High school tennis has been one of the best experiences of my life. I had the opportunity to play with some of the best players in the state and compete at a high level. I played on varsity as a freshman and we ended up hardly losing to Jefferson to go to state that year. My sophomore year we qualified for state, and got all the way to the state championship and lost to Iowa City West, aka our biggest rivals. Junior year we qualifed for state and ended up winning the championship in a battle that lasted for about 12 hours. We had to sweep all doubles in order to beat them, and we did it. My doubles partner and I beat a doubles team that we had never beat before and Sarah and Lees beat a doubles team they lost their title to the day before. It was honestly the picture-perfect championship and I couldn't have imagined winning any other way. That's the biggest reason for coming back to tennis is for the challenge. I'm super competitive and love huge battles on the court.

It's hard to say what will happen this year. We lost three of our top three players. The lineup will have 4 returning varsity letter winners, but we'll have some newcomers at the bottom. The girls have a lot of potential to do well this year, it's just a matter of how hard we work to defend our title now. We worked all winter in the off-season to train for the spring, and we have our first meet coming up on Saturday. It's been bitterly cold and ridiculous outside, but we're fighting through it. Hopefully we have some good weather because we have two meets over spring break! I'm ready for this season to start. I just wish I was as good as Federer!!