One Year...

I just realized as I logged on to create this post that it's been a year since I started this BLOG. It's only fitting to reflect over the past year. So much has happened.

I have grown so much as a tennis player. This time last year, my league season ended with a valiant effort to move onto the state tournament. Our run was thwarted by the team that I played for this year, incidentally. As always at the end of the summer, I feel either burnt out or lost like you feel when the end of the school year comes around; you're happy, but at the same time, it's like what's next. There's a lull, you know.

I was pretty sure my NTRP rating was going to be bumped up because of how well I played and because of my team's success, but ratings don't come out until November and the uncertainty made me unsure of my next steps. At some point I committed to training and competing for national tournaments and I found myself training and working on my game.

The year has gone by so fast.

Last weekend, I competed both in Indianapolis for the Midwest Sectional Championships with my team and in Cincinnati for the Midwest Open Series Championship. I've talked about the events leading up to both so I won't recap everything, but when my team became state champions, I had a tough decision to make. All year, I had worked on my game, so I could be more competitive in the Midwest Open Series Tournaments so that I could qualify to play in the Cincy Championship. I qualified in doubles and only as an alternate in singles.

So, in 24 hours, I found out I was eligible to play both singles and doubles in Cincy and my team won States, sending us to Indy the same weekend. All summer my plan was to play Cincy if invited and play whatever matches I could in Indy, but as the weekend approached and I realized that my team was going with to Indy with 8 players (the minimum needed to compete and yes, I was one of the eight), Indy became more important.

Chances are, I will be bumped up again. And the makeup of my state championship team will change. Two weeks ago, Cincy was the once in a lifetime opportunity, but those tournaments will be there next year. And if I work as hard as I did this year, maybe next year, I can qualify outright. Next year, especially if I am bumped, it will be much harder to qualify for playoffs, let alone states and Sectionals. My team making it to Sectionals, as much as it was about the hard work we put in, was also in part of a lot of things going right for us and me. I had to leave a team full of friends, people I'd played with for a long time and who were always supportive of my tennis dreams. I had to play on a team who played on the west side of town which meant a lot more driving for me, more effort to play this year than last year. I had to trust my captain when she said that the team's goal was to make it to Nationals again.

I have played league tennis for years now, I can honestly say, the success we had is not easily repeatable. I have been on three teams going to Sectionals in ten years. Each of the three times I went, the captain approached me about joining the team and told me how the goal was to make it to Nationals. I can't say enough about the power of a plan and the success rate of a group when everyone buys into that plan. For me, the success rate is 100 percent. I have played on talented teams who fail to make playoffs solely because the team is not all on the same page.

At any cost, I bummed for a second about not being able to play singles in Cincy and about the possibility of not being able to play doubles there depending on the schedule of play for Indy.

Turns out, I was able to do both!

I played Friday and Saturday morning in Indy. After winning my Saturday morning match, I had to hit the road to Cincy even before my team was finished playing. I played one tough doubles match in Cincy before returning to Indy. Sunday morning, same routine. I played a match in Indy and had to hit the road again before knowing my team's results.

This weekend was the best of my life.

My team came up short in Indy. I came up short in Cincy.

Again, this was the best weekend of my life.

I learned a lot about my teammates in Indy. I haven't gotten to hang with them much this summer because I live on the west side and was always hurrying to get home after matches. But staying in the hotel with them, I realized...they are CRAZY!

It was like hanging with your family. (Or maybe it's just my family.) There are times when you are like, I am never hanging out with those people again, but then you get home and you're like, that was so much fun! I can't wait to do it again.

I got to find out which of my teammates drive like MANIACS (Hint: it's the same ones who ACT like maniacs!). I went grocery shopping with them. I now know who is crushing hard on Roddick and who is pretending to have a biracial love child with Cardboard Cutout Peyton Manning. I learned a few new Japanese words though none of them were curse words and that really doesn't do me any good. I was subjected to (or tortured by) a 15 minute discussion about the myth of refrigerating eggs which was reminiscent of my brother's month long debate on which was better Mortal Kombat or Street Fighters. (Can we just agree that this conversation is stupid?)

And I hoped they learned something about me...

Like, seriously, I hate when people get games on me, even in a 6-1, 6-3 victory. I drink Pepsi for medical reasons. And I am secure enough to wear three, four or five different colors to the tennis court.

I have no idea what is next for me, tennis-wise. I am exhausted! Last weekend was the fourth consecutive weekend of me playing three-plus matches in a weekend. I need a break, but I still have mxd doubles going on. We will see how far we can go with that team and then seriously, a break! Two weeks or more of not picking up a racquet at all!

Stay tuned,
KS

Tennis ADHD

I believe I suffer from tennis ADHD. Today while up 4-1 in the second set after taking the first set 6-2, my mind began to wander.

I wondered what my boyfriend was having for dinner and whether he would save me any. Then I wondered where I would stop and what I would grab for dinner if he didn't save me anything. I wondered if Joe's Crab Shack would still be open when I finished my match, because I have been jonesing for some of their fudgy chocolate cake. I wondered how my teammates were doing because I was not paying attention when I was dispatched to my court, so I had no idea what scorecard numbers I was supposed to be using. Then I returned to the thought, that I really was hungry.

I wish I could say that these random thoughts today where an isolated incident, but, they are not. Often my mind wanders in the middle of a match and though it might seem more logical that I just need to find a way to stay focus, I am going to stick with my diagnosis; I have tennis court ADHD.

Stay tuned,
KS

SE Michigan Champions

Serena stole my serve!

This weekend, my day and night teams competed for the right to advance to the state championships and my night team came out victorious!

My biggest challenge this weekend was getting up and being competitive for my 8 o'clock matches. I played six matches this weekend with three matches in the morning; Friday 8am, Saturday 9am and Sunday 8am!

BRUTAL!

Most of you know that I am the first to admit that I am not a competitive person in the morning. If you want to get together and rally back and forth, chit chat a bit, tell a few jokes at eight o'clock in the morning, I am your woman. My hockey friends joke about putting their "ugly" on before a game. Well, my "ugly" doesn't go on until noon, at least! There have been several matches that I have played where I've played the same woman in the morning and then again in the evening and the scores are totally different.

Knowing that I had early morning matches, I prepared for them the whole week preceding the district tournament. I woke up early and hit with a friend of mine at 8am everyday. On Friday, the morning of my first match, I got up at 5:15 and drove down to Plymouth-Canton HS courts, the site of the tournament. I made a quick stop by Panera Bread's drive-thru, so I could grab an egg and cheese sandwich and a regular Pepsi. (Seriously needed the caffeine.) I drove to Canton with my music blaring loud enough to wake everyone who lived between Clinton Twp and Canton and hit with Sue for an hour to get the blood flowing. I picked Sue to hit with because I always enjoy drilling her with the ball and I couldn't think of anyone else who would get me fired up to annihilate an opponent like Sue.

My first match was against a hard hitting lady that I managed to run over for the first four games. Then up 4-1, she began to come back and I began to fall asleep. I managed to win the first set 6-4. In the second set, I focused for four games and after the fifth, found myself up 4-1, but this time when I fell asleep, I would lose the second set. I managed to find the finish line in the third-set tiebreaker, but it wasn't easy.

So, I slayed the early morning dragon in match one. I was relieved, but also happy. It was a good first match. I wanted a match that wasn't a walk-over. I also wanted an opponent that could hit the ball and wasn't a pusher. I've gotten pretty good at beating pushers, which was a goal early this year, but it has also conditioned me to panic when I face a stronger opponent because I so rarely play someone who pounds the ball. Also, winning in a tie-breaker was a big confidence boost because it was the first match all year where I had to gather myself after losing a second set and focus on the winner-take-all set. And I prevailed.

The second big challenge for me was my fifth match where I knew I would face someone I'd lost to earlier in the summer. The loss was one of those where you don't even know what happened. Less than an hour after going down on the court, you find yourself coming back, barely winded and with most of the water you carried with you because you didn't exert enough energy to warrant hydrating. That loss bugged me the rest of the season, but when it became evident that I would face this woman again, I really began to worry. My team, always so supportive, gave me the choice of playing number one singles, which I have always done, or taking my chances at number two singles, where I wouldn't have to carry that mental baggage with me on the court. The morning of the match, when I was asked, "Number 1 or 2?" I said 1, but I had to force myself to say it quickly. I was committed to facing my fear.

I have never played a match where I was so focused. Every point, it was not about winning the point, but hitting the shot that I've hit a million times. Every time I hit the ball, I wanted to hit it with the same confidence that I hit that same shot in practice. No pressure, right?

But it worked. Before I knew it, the match was over. 6-2, 6-0. The results better than I could ever imagine!

Now my team is on to the state championships this coming weekend in Ann Arbor.

After taking Monday off to recuperate (six singles matches is NO JOKE), I hit this morning with Sue and I have a full week of tennis ahead of me.

Bring on States!

Stay tuned!

KS

One, Two, Three...

7 matches in 36 hours! I am surprised that I didn't have to be propped up to take this picture. 3rd place in the 30s Singles division. Not too bad!

Because of the small draws in all of the divisions, play did not begin until Saturday morning. I spent the night with relatives in a suburb northwest of Chicago, so Saturday morning I had a two hour drive to the tournament site. I wanted to use the time driving to the match to focus on my goals. I participated in three divisions of the Midwest Adult Championships; women's 30s singles, women's open singles and women's open doubles. For the open divisions, I simply wanted to play the best tennis I was capable of against the younger, harder hitting opponents I was likely to be facing. With my league teams advancing to the playoffs, I wanted to be able to play this boot-camp style tennis, getting as many matches in as possible before next weekend. In the 30s event, I wanted to win as many matches as possible in order to earn ranking points because this event would add points to my national ranking.

There are times when despite your best efforts, it may not be meant for you to win. This is a lesson, I have resisted learning all season long. I went 18-3 this summer in singles during USTA league play and despite that being a very good record, I have focused on the losses, obsessed about the failures and generally beat myself up afterwards for 'what went wrong'. Of the three losses, realistically, there was only one match where the outcome was within my control. But I have really taken losses hard this year.

So Saturday, despite my best intentions, did not start the way I would have liked it to. I was sick to my stomach on the drive to the match. When I got to the tournament site, because of the rain, play had been moved inside and 9 o'clock matches were put on as soon as both players arrived at the indoor facility. So mentally prepared for a 9 o'clock start, I was not prepared to go on at 8:15. And even though my stomach had settled, butterflies began to return. I hadn't had a chance to eat because of the upset stomach. The day before I had practiced under the same circumstances of not eating and had gotten extremely dizzy ten minutes into the drills, so the thought of not eating occupied my mind during the five minute warm-up.

I started the match by losing my service game. I managed to hang in the match for the next six games before I was broken again. My opponent never lost her serve. In the beginning of the second set, I began to notice slight cramping, but it never really affected my play, so I ignored it, instead trying to keep my goal in mind; play the best points I can. I was happy with my first round loss, because I was happy with my play.

Then came my second match, one hour after my first one finished...

The cramping was almost immediate. Despite having come close to ODing on potassium, both pills and bananas, and chugging gatorades one after the other, nothing would alleviate the cramping. By the second set of a 1-6, 0-6 loss, I couldn't even manage to swing at balls that were merely a foot away. There was a huge indentation in the bicep of my hitting arm that formed a near perfect 'V' in the middle. After the match when I went to stand on my toes, several of them curled like the ribbons on a birthday present. Never had I experienced something like that and on top of everything, I had lost my opening match in the 30s singles, the one event where I wanted to win.

Eventually, the cramping went away. The bananas and the pills begin to do their jobs and I was able to play a third singles match and a doubles match that afternoon without incident.

I've talked about my doubles partner before, a thirteen-year old who is preparing to play pro events next year when she turns 14 in order to be exposed to hard hitting players. I've watched her a lot this summer demolishing some players and losing to others with obvious less talent. I always ask her what happened after her losses and she always responds with the same smile and shrug. I admire how the losses never stick with her. But when talking to her and her father, I understand; win or lose, the goals are being met; being aggressive on points, hitting a good, deep, hard ball. Her success isn't measured in wins or losses.

I started playing tournaments to improve my game. I wanted to hit with people who hit the ball hard. I wanted to find the best competition and do my best while competing. There was a time when that meant success for me, when I was just happy to be on a court playing an opponent who hit with pace and didn't junk up every single shot that came my way.

I left the tournament late Sunday afternoon having won 3 matches and loss 4. I was runner up in the Open Consolation Singles Finals, third place in 30s singles, and 2nd place with Ty Ana in Open doubles.

I got to drive two hours by myself to my relatives to pick up my mom and my nephew before heading home. During that alone time, I reflected on my tournament.

I really do love playing these tournaments. I'd been on the fence about attending the National 30s Clay Court tournament in Florida in November. There's the expense, the lack of experience on clay, and my plunging confidence. But Sunday, I felt renewed.

The first goal is to do my part in getting one of my playoff bound teams to nationals! To do that, I need to just play the best tennis I am capable of, not worrying about who is on the other side of my net. My mom often reminds me that my opponent is not on the other side of the net. My opponent is in my head.

My second goal is to prepare for the Midwest Open Series tournament in Cincy at the end of August. That is a time for me to play my best and have fun with Ty Ana.

My third goal is to prepare for the next sectional tournament which is the first weekend in October.

One, Two, Three...

Stay tuned,
KS