Adidas' 6-Month Outsole Guarantee

If you are as rough on your shoes as I am, you should totally take advantage of Adidas' 6-month outsole guarantee.

I happen to wear Adidas, so I am most familiar with their return policy, but other tennis shoes also offer a similar type of warranty.

My Adidas normally go from that great new shoe feel to holes in the soles in about four months. Because of my chronic foot problems, I have been more diligent about returning the shoes shortly after they began to break down rather than wait the full six months. By the time they get to the point that they have holes in them like the pictures above, I am able to feel the lack of support in my feet.

To take advantage of the Adidas guarantee, the wear on the shoe has to be on the outsole. You have to have the original receipt. And you have to pay the shipping costs for your replacement pair.

I have utilized this return policy for eight pairs of shoes so far and have received replacement pairs all eight times. There is some kind of evaluation process where Adidas could deny your claim, but I've never experienced a denial and my wear is very consistent with tennis movements.

Shoes have to be sent to:

Adidas 6-Month Outsole Guarantee

685 Cedar Crest Road

Spartansburg, SC 29304

This address is different from the address printed on the little card in some of the older Adidas tennis shoes. Evidently, the company changed warehouses and have yet to update some of their information.

Whenever I send my shoes back, I place them in the original box, with the original receipt and a check made out to "adidas" for $8.30. I usually receive my replacement pair in 2 to 3 weeks.

Stay tuned,

KS

2011

My new year's post is a little late...



After such an amazing, whirlwind 2010, I found myself in a "waiting room" of sorts when thinking about my future tennis plans. Sometimes, we make the mistake of stepping in the wrong direction when we are unsure of which direction to take. There's nothing wrong with standing still, taking a breath and waiting for a path to illuminate itself.



If you're like me, somewhat of a control-freak, this is difficult to do.



First I was bumped to 4.5, inevitable after my 2010, but in the same sense, it was like winning a championship and a week later, knowing that the process of becoming a champion; the work, the repetition, the long hours, all of that begins again.



Second, all of my friends are 3.5 and 4.0. The camaraderie, the support and the comfort that I found with teammates has pretty much been the same core of people for the entire decade that I've been playing. Pushing myself to be better now no longer simply means me calling my pals and playing until someone gets to hungry to continue. I will have to do more. I will have to play more. And I will have to broaden my circle of practice partners.



And though it makes sense that things would evolve, I never thought about it. I never thought about what that next step would be. One by one, my long time pals were pointing it out to me and I have to say, I felt like I was being pushed out of the nest.



One of my favorite quotes likens us to dinosaurs. Their failure to change and adapt led to their extinction and humans in their daily endeavors are no different.



But who wants to change really? Why? When habits and routines can be so comfortable, so predictable and so reliable and change can be scary and uncertain.



There was a time when everything I did in tennis was new. The first month I went to clinics at Peachtree Tennis Club, I didn't know anyone. I sucked at courtesy feeding the ball and EVERYONE knew it. I could hear the quiet groans, forced patience at the newbie whose wild and errant forehands would often leave 'WILSON' tattooed on your chest, but couldn't keep more than two consecutive balls in play.



Somewhere along the line, that became less knew and I sought other challenges.



And I started playing tournaments.



Again, the newness, the change.



There were years when ninety percent of my match scores were double bagels, 0-6, 0-6. For some reason, I hung in there, hoping to push through to that point where the newness dissipated.



This January when I began to look forward to the new year, I realized, the dust of newness had settled and the wrong turn could easily send me down the path toward "rut". And since I don't want to end up like our dear old friends, the dinosaurs, I chose the path for change, for improvement, for setting goals and achieving them.



This year, I am again, going to push myself beyond my comfort level.



My first goal is to win a main draw match in a National Open level tournament.



Stay tuned,

KS.

85 MATCHES LATER...

I was curious about a particular match I had played in the summer. I couldn't remember the scores, so I searched my record on the USTA website. As I was scrolling through numerous listings, I became curious; how many matches had I played?

Next Sunday will mark my last match of the year. It will be my 85th match of 2010.

All I can say is, wow.

This does not even include the matches I played for the suburban league, which is not recorded on the USTA site or all the ITA-sanctioned matches I played, matches where I endured swift beatdowns by college players in order to better prepare myself for the USTA summer season and the 30s tournaments.

85 matches.

My tournament year ended with the National 30s Clay Court Tournament in Fort Lauderdale, Florida the week after Thanksgiving. What a way to burn off some of that turkey, huh?

I had gone back and forth about going for a few months. Following my hectic August, I felt I needed a break. I wasn't exactly burnt out, but I could see myself going that way if I didn't do something to downshift. So, I didn't commit to any fall tennis; agreeing only to "sub" if I felt like it on a couple of teams. I threw myself into my ice hockey season and allowed myself to enjoy my teammates and practices and the fun of being in a locker room with a crazy group of women!

Slowly, I began to attend tennis clinics now and then, dropping in when time permitted and oftentimes when I just had no desire to actually go to the gym and work out.

The decision to go to the National Clay followed the death of my Uncle Johnnie. I didn't see him as much as I wanted to over the last year. Working and worrying about stupid things had preoccupied my time and I told myself with everything I've been neglecting, I will just do it later, do it tomorrow and do it next year.

Still, now, I don't know if there is a balance. I don't know if its possible to sacrifice time and enjoy the present, but I am definitely going to start trying.

At any cost, Florida was my best trip ever!

I was most concerned about playing an outdoor tournament when I have been in wonderfully cold Michigan where the last time I was outdoors playing was in October, which of course was the last time I was able to play on clay. I arrived two days before my first match and spent both days acclimating myself to the outdoors and the clay. I am proudest of how I dealt with the adjustment. It was almost seamless.

I was determined to go to Florida and work hard, but also enjoy it. And I can honestly say, I enjoyed the pre-tournament court time. I enjoyed watching the guys compete and other women in the draw. I met some cool people. I got a glimpse of my "class" of tennis players. Most of the women in the draw have been around 38 years of age. But this time, I got to see the future of the 30s, women like myself, on the younger side of 30s group, some of them playing their first or second 30s tournament. We talked and exchanged information and looked forward to seeing each other at the next tournament.

I am excited.

I got bumped out of the main draw of singles early and played poorly in the back draw despite a couple of wins. I also got bumped into the back draw of doubles with my partner, Chris from CA, another 30s newbie. But we made it to the consolation final where we won 6-0, 6-2. I also played the best tennis of the tournament there. Pretty good for someone whose favorite quote is "Oh, I suck at doubles."

I received a lot of compliments from pretty established players including a lady who is a teaching pro in Juniper, Florida. Chris and I played her in the second round of doubles and she told me she was amazed by my consistent second serve aces! Big props from a lady who was awesome in the doubles draw!

The clay nationals also marked the first time I'd been away from Mark for a whole week. (I'm a baby, I know.) But I missed him so much!

I came back fully expecting to be exhausted from the week, exhausted from the travel, exhausted from 85 tennis matches in 2010!

But here I am, eager to work harder, eager to hit the gym and looking forward to the first match of 2011. Here I am, number 8 in the nation in women's 30s singles, partial sponsorship from Adidas, Wilson Racquet ambassador. Pretty amazing for someone who just picked up a racquet 10 years ago and tried out for her college team.

85 matches.

Stay tuned,
KS

Not Taking Life For Granted

Okay, so it's been awhile since I blogged.

I needed to take some time away from tennis. Not that I actually felt burnt out, but I could see it happening if I kept up at the insane pace I did this summer. I committed to very little tennis-wise and the things I did commit to, I did so under substitute circumstances. That way, if I did get to the point where I was rolling my eyes or groaning whenever I looked at my calendar and saw that there was tennis scheduled for that day.

And it worked. For the first time in a long time, I actually was very excited about my hockey season. I started running again, both to stay in shape and to outdo this guy from Denver who keeps popping up in all my Nike running challenges and talking trash. During this hiatus for tennis, I played now and then outside, trying to soak up the last few days of good Michigan weather. I attended a few tennis where my primary goal was laughing with my friends and seeing if I could hit a tweener or just how high I could launch a moonball. Thoughts about going to the next National 30s tournament, plans I was pretty committed to at the beginning of the summer, faded to the back of my mind.

I settled into a very needed routine, a balanced one. Getting up shortly after my boyfriend left for work. Running, alternating between long run days and sprint workouts at the local high school's track. (Not the very local high school because there's a conspiracy to keep the southern half of the township fat and lazy by denying them access to the track and tennis courts for exercise. But perhaps that topic deserves it's own post.) Cleaning the house and eating breakfast and then settling into an afternoon of writing.

The routine brought me much needed sanity and most of my life, especially lately, I think my whole life's purpose is to find the fountain of sanity. At any cost, for the first time, in a few years, things felt okay.

My uncle died this past Saturday. And although I just met him and the rest of my mom's family three years ago, I found myself as reflective as I was when I finally came to some sort of terms with my dad's death. I guess death causes you to think about things. The biggest thing I took from my own father's death is that I didn't want to wait for things. I wanted to do them or make them happen if there were obstacles in my way of doing them.

I write because I want to know that if I dropped dead tomorrow, I did so trying for something I always wanted to do. People say to me all the time, I've always wanted to write a book. When the kids grow up... When I get some time off of work... When I retire...

You've heard me say that my favorite quote is by George Eliot: "It's never too late to become what you might have been."

Well, that's why I play tennis despite picking up a racquet merely ten years ago. I am going to be that national champion that I could have been. Sure, it won't be as a college student. But I will win a national championship.

At any cost, I have decided that I am going to the Clay Court Nationals at the end of the month. Too many times, I focus so much on what is not going on with me, I fail to acknowledge the things that are going on; the support of Mark, the encouragement of friends, the extra time and attention so many people have shown me to help me realize my dreams.

And I think to myself, what am I waiting for?

Stay tuned...
KS

Courage: The Mental Game

I often here people say how mental tennis is. And I agree with them. I've played matches I should have won, but lost simply because of a lack of belief in myself. I've gone into matches thinking that I was the underdog and then proceeded to play like I was an underdog, unworthy of winning. I have played matches where there is a complete lack of focus where after the match I could barely recall the score let alone where my blunders were.

As most of you know, I play other sports. I have played hockey games with no subs where we had to play an entire game with no breaks. I have played soccer games in 90-plus degree heat here the other team had scores of subs and seemed ready to run circles around us. There are times at soccer games when people compliment me on my fitness, saying, "Of course you could play the whole game, you're in shape."

I had lunch with a friend today where we talked about the importance of pushing yourself. How many times had we told ourselves 'just skate as hard as you can'? See what happens. 'I'm not tired. Just skate hard one more minute'. So many times I surprise myself when I get to a ball I didn't think I could get to or at the end of a hockey game I think to myself, I cannot believe I played the whole game and didn't die!

It's very easy to be comfortable where you are. There's safety in doing things you've done for years.

I talk about going to the 'Big Bangers' clinic at Franklin on Saturdays. The first clinic I was so intimidated. Everyone there played so much better than me. But what I've found is that everyone there respects me for how hard I work. I realized that the effort is much more impressive than the result and the result is directly related to the effort.

It's been awhile since I blogged, but a few weeks ago at the last campus showdown I attended, I had the pleasure of playing a nine-year old boy. Although he had decent strokes, it was evident from the start that I should beat him. So I took that as an opportunity to work on my B game; serving and volleying, chipping and charging, following everything short to the net. I am not at all comfortable at the net, not as much as I am ripping groundstrokes from the baseline. To be comfortable, you have to experience discomfort.

My life lately have been uncomfortable. Constantly I am finding myself in a position where I have to put myself out there, where I have to talk more than I would normally, where I have to put aside the fear of failing and looking foolish so that I can attempt to succeed at achieving my dreams. When I first met my boyfriend, I told him how I always wanted to play hockey. I signed up to play in a league before I had ever laced up a skate. Then I went to the store and walked up to a salesman and told him that I needed all the equipment to play. My boyfriend asked how did I have the nerve to just show up at a team practice without ever playing.

It was mental. I told myself I could do it and hard as it was, I put myself out there; falling and crashing into the boards, equipment not put on properly where a coach had to pull me aside and fix my helmet like I was a five-year old.

And I learned the difference between courage and fear isn't innate. Everyone is scared. The people who are labelled fearless are scared inside. Courage is simply not letting your fears get the best of you.

My goal is still to be a national tennis champion. I am always scared of humiliating myself, of being the absolutely worse player in the tournament when I check in. Courage.

Stay tuned,
KS

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