Tennis Team

From my house, I have a lovely view of several of the local high school’s sports fields, but the one I can see best, and the one that brings back the most memories, are the tennis courts. I look on those young people out there and a myriad of thoughts spring into being.

Obviously, I hearken back to the days of yesteryear when I was one of the players having to endure sometimes bizarre training exercises. (Fingertip push-ups? Really? I’ve never known this to be a factor in tennis.) I also remember the struggle of having to run on the track. See, I’ve been a life-long sufferer of exercise-induced asthma, but that malady wasn’t really on the radar for most doctors in the late 1970s, never mind the athletes. I could do the 10 m sprints necessary on the court, but even something as trivial (for most) as a 100 m run on the track would leave me gasping for breath.

I remember well the ladder matches I had to play in my first two seasons in order to secure placement on the team (I had an afterschool job my senior year, so the coach just put me where he needed me). And then there were the matches that counted. I can still feel the knot in my gut about the last point of the first match I played in.

We were playing Suitland High School. The school had a not-too-good rep, so none of us were comfortable being on the grounds to begin with. My match (doubles) was the last one up. It all came down to a 3rd set tiebreak. Understand, this was a weird time in tennis when tiebreakers were just coming into vogue. There were two different methods used. A 12-point tiebreaker (the same as we use now), and the 9-point tiebreaker. The standard for our county was the 9-point tie breaker. First one to score 5 points won. So, there we were: Sets 1-1, Games 6-6, Tiebreak 4-4, and I had the last service. I faulted the first serve. So…it all came down to one last serve in my first match. I didn’t double fault (thanks to my mantra: DON’T double fault). We won. My most stressful match, ever.

My senior year on the team was a mixed bag. To forge a team with the greatest chance of winning, I agreed to play doubles at a lower position than my rank on the team warranted. Unfortunately, my regular doubles partner got injured early in the season and I got a rotation of partners. I didn’t know from one match to the next who would be playing beside me. The one player that I had the most success with got swapped out after a couple of matches with some of the new people. It was a little frustrating, but there was nothing I could do. I played my heart out, and even played through a back injury that I probably shouldn’t have tried playing through, in retrospect.

I have a lot of good memories about my time playing on the tennis team. I have mixed feeling about when I played as an individual in tournaments. Though you see the same people week to week, there just isn’t the same camaraderie there as when you are with a team. So, when I look over and see the students practicing or playing a match with another school, I’m happy for them.

But, I’m also so very glad that I’m not them. I played tennis for about thirty years (allowing for injury breaks). I had to change my serve twice to compensate for injuries. The wear and tear of three decades ruined my knees, toes, ankles, back, shoulders, elbows, wrists, and fingers. During my last couple of years playing, for every hour on the court I had to spend 1 1/2 hours icing down. Not fun. The last six months, I couldn’t even play actual matches because I could no longer raise my arm to serve. Ironically, I didn’t pop an ACL until a year after I’d stopped playing.

With the pain well imprinted on my brain and in my muscle memory, I’m so thankful that it is those teens who are doing their darnedest to whack at a yellow-green ball and not me. And I would tell them in a heartbeat that it was all worth it. Learning to be part of a team working for a common cause is something that I think all young people should learn…not just academically, but also physically if they are able. There is something about putting your body on the line that is different than bonding with less physically challenging pursuits (I’ve been part of both, so I know).

It’s so cool to be able to look at these kids, thirty years removed from doing the same task as I did, and not so much envy them but envy me for having done what they are doing. I got lucky.