Tennis Team in Hawaii: Second match against HPU

March 22, 2008

tennis team member Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner:

Okay so this morning we woke up really early (8!) and went to the swap meet before our match against Hawaii Pacific University.

The swap meet is basically this huge flea market that stretches all the way around the Aloha Stadium and is always worth a trip. They sell everything from homemade jams, to cheap t-shirts (10 dollars for 20 shirts? Not bad) to local snack goodies (like dried mangoes, li-hing pineapples, etc) to paper lanterns to tacky tourist knickknacks (which are really completely useless) and basically everything in between.

Anyways, we spent a good hour just walking around and I bought this really cute dress and purse so I’m hella psyched. Yeah I’m kinda girly.

So after we went to the swap meet, we went to Central Oahu Regional Park (CORP) to play our match against Hawaii Pacific University, who gave BYU a run for their money and is also in Division 2. Now, this team had just played some team from Illinois and totally lost so they were all already pissed. Not to mention tired, since two matches back to back is tough. So this team was not only a challenge because they were more experienced but also because they were really, really rude.

Some of the girls wouldn’t even put up a real fight. The way they played was so incredibly disrespectful – it was written all over their face that they felt we were privileged to play them at all and that they needed to get the game done as fast, with as many big shots, and with as little effort, as possible.

When playing tennis, opponents take a short little break between every two games to grab water. Some of these girls, though, were in such a rush to get it over with that they actually tried to push some of my teammates into not taking water breaks. Actually we encountered this in our match against BYU also. My girl tried that on me. But that was so not gonna happen. If I’m gonna get beat, and beat real bad, I figure I might as well take my time with it.

This match, I had to play at number 1 instead of number 2, which is usually my ranking. The girl I was playing was on scholarship and was originally from Bosnia and had been playing for 12 years. But I wasn’t trippin’ cuz at least I got to win one game out of my entire match which really, really pissed off the girl I was playing. That was great.

I also played third doubles with my teammate Sena before my singles match and that actually went pretty well. We had some really good points and me and Sena were able to hold our own at the net.

In our usual team discussion after games, we all discussed how rude most of the players were but we also all agreed that most of us played better than yesterday, where nerves seemed to really take over most of our games.

After our match, we went to Ala Moana Mall, which is this giant mall in Hawaii with three floors of shopping. We went there to eat at the food court and then some of the team stayed. I left with Marc and our teammates Sena, Vicki, and Jen cuz I wasn’t about to stick around and spend more money then I had to. Believe me, though, I was tempted.