State Tournament

This past week-end, my ladies' tennis team played in the state tournament in Williamson County. We won our league, as I previously posted about, and earned a birth in the state tournament. Our division was split into two groups. The winner of each group faced off in the finals on Sunday afternoon. There were teams from Memphis, Jackson, Union City, Knoxville, Nashville, Chattanooga, and the Tri-Cities, for a total of 10 teams from across the state. We played our first match Friday and won - a great start to the tournament! (By the way, a team match consists of 2 courts of singles and 3 courts of doubles, for a total of 5 courts.) On Saturday we played two matches and won both of them! That had us in 1st place with one match left on Sunday morning. We won Sunday morning, so we won our group with a record of 4-0! That had us facing off against the winner from the other group for the championship. The winner of the other group just so happened to be the 2nd place team from our local league. We had already played them 3 times this year - we had won twice and they had won once. Obviously, being a team we knew from our local league made it a grudge match. But, one of our players from last year switched teams and is playing for our opponent this year. So there's a bit of history between our two teams, and neither team particularly likes the other team. Yes - it speaks highly of our league that it was our two teams fighting it out for the state championship, but still, we'd rather have played someone else! In the championship, I played singles (just as I had done the other 4 matches in the tournament) against the girl who had played on our team last year. I played her a couple of weeks ago in a tournament and beat her for the championship, so I knew she'd be wanting revenge. I won the first set, but then lost the second set. The format for this league tennis is that instead of playing a complete third set, you play a 10-point tiebreaker. The first person to 10 wins the tiebreaker. Well, I completely choked and lost the tiebreaker, so I lost my court of singles. I was devastated! I'm used to winning and I'm used to my team counting on me to win my court. During the regular season I didn't lose at all. In the local playoffs I suffered my first lost, but my team still won the match. During this state tournament, I won my first three matches, but then lost on Sunday morning in a third set tiebreaker. And then as I just detailed above, I lost Sunday afternoon in a third set tiebreaker. So until yesterday, I had only lost once all year! So losing two matches in one day was pretty hard on me emotionally!!! I came off the court yesterday to find out that my team had won 2 courts and lost 2 courts, so it was up to the last doubles court to pull out a victory for us. They were in a third set tiebreaker too. But like me, they couldn't pull it out, so our team fell short of the state championship. I was soooooo upset because if I had just pulled out my match, we would've won the state championship! I really felt like the burden of the tournament fell on my shoulders and I completely let everyone down. Of course my teammates were all very nice and didn't blame me, but I blamed myself. All season long they had counted on me to win whenever I stepped on the court, and I did - up until yesterday. And for the first time all year, I lost and my team lost. My captain said to look on the bright side - had we won, we'd be heading to the sectional tournament in Mobile at the end of July, and who wants to be in the Mobile heat in July!! Plus it would be a long drive and quite expensive. But that didn't console me too much! Oh well - I'll just have to get over it!!!

A highlight of the week-end is that I got to visit my friend Gwen on Friday afternoon. I went over to her house and hung out at the pool with Gwen and her 3 kids. It had been 4 years since I had seen them, and Jeremiah & Elijah have grown up so much! And I had never met Emily. She is adorable and quickly became my buddy!! I had an enjoyable afternoon. Thanks Gwen for letting me hang out with you guys for a while. I really enjoyed our visit. And Happy Birthday Emily!