Duck Diary Part Four
Part 4 - Hello again. You should see the smile on my face right now. It’s more like a grin. You know the kind of smile you get when you reminisce about great times with friends? Or the smile that comes almost immediately after your first kiss? You know what I’m talking about. It’s unavoidable, it’s contagious, and I will bet that I can infect you before you’re done reading this journal.
Let me start by telling you something that our assistant coach, Kathy Sell, said a few months ago in one of her very inspiring motivational speeches. As you may or may not have known, Kathy was a pro-star junior tennis player. She had every major university begging her to grace them with her presence. However, Coach Sell had her own agenda. She wanted to go to a program that wasn’t known for winning dozens of national titles where she would be just another pawn in the larger scheme of things. Kathy wanted to go to a school where she would help the program grow and become a major national contender. Have you heard about the Duke Tennis team lately? I know I have.
Now let me get to the inspiring and motivational part. Kathy continued by saying that just a few years ago the Oregon Duck Tennis team and the words national contender, or even RANKING did not belong in the same sentence, let alone the same book. Times change my friends. The Ducks have arrived and we’re here to stay. The intro has been written and this is going to be one giant mother of a book. You better put on those reading glasses and get ready for a wild ride.
Are you smiling yet?
Which reminds me, before I continue, I want to say thank you to all of our incredible fans. You know exactly who you are. I sure do. From the loud cheers to the duck calls, every single bit of support is much appreciated. You make us feel like rock stars and you make our opponents feel like scared little mice. Do ducks eat mice? It would be a good source of protein for them. Yup. Ducks eat mice. At least they do in Eugene.
I guess I can’t finish this journal yet without actually writing about how our team has been doing. That is the point of this entire Duck Diary right? Well, the DUCKS are doing great. We’re 6 and 0 on the season now and four of those wins were over ranked teams.
All I can say is that I am in complete awe of all my teammates and coaches. Our doubles play is world class, or close to it, because I know there is still a great deal of room for improvement. It is nearly impossible to hit a ball past my six foot tall partner, Domcia, who we now call "octopus" because of her incredible tentacle-like reach. Dasza and Courtney are absolutely unstoppable when they play well.
Davina has the touch of a goddess. She drives her opponents nuts. As soon as her opponents step off the court their next stop is the check-in at the local insane asylum.
Ester’s precision on her ground strokes and volleys is so accurate that if I spotted an ant on the court she could aim a ball directly at it. But, Ester wouldn’t usually hurt a fly so she would make the ball bounce right over the ant where the crease of the ball would protect it. Bakova wouldn’t do that for a mouse though. She would squash it with her ball and then feed it to the local ducks.
Jamie and Monica’s volleys have come light years from where they were last year. Not that they were bad or anything, but now they’re just superb. Simple. World class volleys.
All these ingredients make our doubles a very strong and feared weapon. And that’s just the beginning. I can write about our singles play for hours upon hours, but I’ll save that for later. I do have to write about our upcoming weekend though. We have two HUGE matches. Arizona and Arizona State. Wildcats and Sun Devils. Mono a mono times two.
Both matches are at home, both teams are beatable, both of our coaches believe in us, and both of my fingers are crossed.
Bring. It. On.
"Only in the moment of discipline do you have the power to achieve your dreams"
