Sunday, March 30, 2008

Tennis Team in Hawaii: Third Match against Chaminade University

March 23, 2008
tennis team member Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner:

I’m pretty exhausted right now but I’ll try to squeeze in a couple lines about today.

Today we played Chaminade University, also Division 2 but not as high up in ranking as HPU or BYU. So we went into the game with higher hopes than our other games since this would actually be sort of a battle, not just a slaughtering.

It turns out, though, they really weren’t that much less tough than the other teams. Apparently, they even put up a really good fight against HPU. Marc told us that their top three players were all really good but their lower ranks were easier to handle.

The girl I played was really, really good. Playing for 10 years. But at least in this game, we had a lot of really long rallies. I was surprised, in fact, that I was able to get to most of her shots. There were a couple I wasn’t sure I’d make it to cuz they were so fast but I’d just book it and I actually made it to them! That was satisfying. All of her strokes had huge top spin, though, which sucked but once I got used to it, it was cool. There were a couple of unforced errors I made though (unforced error = hitting out or hitting into the net, not because her shots were tough but because I just made the mistake on my own. ie unforced) and I'm pretty disappointed I couldn't get a game out of it. I was really bummed about that.

It was a good, fun match for me, though – I actually felt like a tennis player rather than just a pig waiting to be ripped into. Gross, I know, but true. A lot of the team was unhappy with the match, though, and I think that was because we all felt we should have done a lot better since this team was supposed to be the one team we could put up a good fight against. But from the beginning, the atmosphere of the team didn’t feel right to me – but that’s probably just me.

Anyways, after the match, we headed out to another beach – I think it was Haleiwa. It was a nice beach, and we had a picnic which was great. But all that sun today really wore on me so I’m out.

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