The First College Tennis Match

Well over the weekend I had a tennis match in Alma, Michigan which is about 3 hours North of Defiance. It was quite an interesting drive to say the least because the whole day before we left it had been snowing and the roads were very slick. Well to get there we took one of the College's vans, which if anyone has seen them are ginormous. Needless to say we skidded and slided quite a few times making me wonder "am I really going to die on my first ever V-Day with a girlfriend." Not one of the best things you want to be thinking while your already nervous for tennis. So we got there no trouble at all really minus a few slides here and there.

Well we arrive on Alma's campus which is really nice. Pretty and small. Bigger then Defiance, yet everything seemed to be the same distance of a walk. Well we arrive at the Rec Center where the indoor tennis courts are held and the first thing I noticed are the lines on the tennis court. Yes there were tennis court lines but these courts were not just tennis courts but multipurpose courts. Which means there was the white lines resembling tennis, yellow lines for volleyball, and red lines to be used for basketball. Oh and since these courts are multi purpose courts, the ball reacted totally differently then what was usually expected. For those of you that know anything about tennis, a flat shot got even flatter and faster, a top spin shot reacted like a normal flat shot, and a slice shot, pretty much just skidded across the court by you leaving you wondering what the hell just happened. This wasn't what I was hoping for in my first college tennis match.

So we get to warm ups to get the feel of the court and it was much needed. I seemed to be stroking the ball fine, however I was having a very tough time reacting to the court and how it played. Finally I seem to be getting the feel of the court when low and behold it's time to play.

It took at least 4 games in to get my nerves finally settled. By this time we had broken our opponents serve once and haven't dropped ours at all. We were off to a good start. My service game seemed to be doing good. I had already hit a clean ace and several non returners. It's always nice to get those easy points off the serve. Helps you settle into the game. By the 4th or 5th game I finally settled down and realized, "hey I can just play my game from High School and be fine." Once I realized that the first game was a piece of cake and my partner and I won the match 8-4 ( it shouldn't have been that close because we started making dumb mistakes). Since we finished so quickly we had time to root on our teammates in their matches as well. Everything seemed find and dandy and no one really had troubles and we ended up beating Adrian 8-1 overall match wise.

The second match of the day panned out differently however. Alma was a very strong team and we knew this going into it. I was a little more calm going into this one as I already had my first ever college win under my belt. This Alma team proved to be a tougher task however. My partner and I along with the other team just kept on exchanging points and it was very close. Finally we caved first though and we lost my partners serve and it was all down hill from there. We ended up losing to a very good Alma team 8-3, however the score doesn't show how close the match really was. Overall as a team it wasn't much better as we almost got shut out and lost 8-1 as a team.

Overall it was a fun day, and good experience. Now I know what I may be up against in the future and won't be as nervous. It was a shame however I couldn't be with my favorite person in the world for V-Day. (sorry sweetie :'( )