Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Tennis: Honey Badgers prevail

Here's my recap of tonight's match. I'll try to do them weekly — though, no promises. (I already missed last week.)

So, without further ado: We had a team win — four courts! — against Pleasant Valley.

All of our doubles courts won in straight sets. Dianne and Jean, who never play together, were especially impressive in their 6-0, 6-1 victory that took less than an hour. Tremendous!

Becks was our 11th hour sub after Marilee couldn't play. She and Beth have years of experience playing together, and neither of them was thrown by the last-minute change. Becky clearly did not have first-match jitters (as I did), and Beth has won both of her matches. Yay!

I'm also thrilled for Katie, who won her singles match (also in straight sets). Katie is not one to toot her own horn, so if you see her, tell her what an awesome job she did!

Lisa had a tough match at #1 singles — she played great and battled her opponent in the longest of tonight's matches. It was a terrific effort, and the second set was extremely close at 7-5.

Our team had been assigned court 1 and courts 5 through 8. At one point on court 8, a player was down. I couldn't do anything about it, as I was three courts away and in the middle of a match. Still, it was not a good feeling to ignore someone in distress. But I knew Patty saw what happened, and she never flips out about anything — including when Sendik's didn't have our food order ready — so I knew she could take care of the situation. (It turns out that the player was from another team and had started cramping in an epic third set.)

Tonight was something of a strange night, marked by moments of thunder. (Literally. Glad we played inside.) Also, Patrice told me I looked tired. I was! It turns out Gatorade is not a magical elixir.

Thank you to Carol and Colleen, who stayed until the very end. We can't always play spectator-worthy tennis, but knowing someone is rooting for you does make a difference. And this team plays together, parties together, and prays together. Colleen and I don't pray, but she knows what I mean.

Go team!

PS: I should give credit to Doug, who gave us our team name. If you didn't already know, the honey badger is immune to snake bites and bee stings. It overpowers bigger, stronger animals. It can also run backwards (something I'd love to be able to do). See where we're going with this?

1 comment:

Denise said...

Naomi, I love the honey badger. Looks like you knew of the honey badger long before I did, though! Glad to see honey badger appears to also do very well at tennis. Who knew?