Duck Diary #1 - Romeo Mortera - University of Oregon Athletics

Duck Diary

2/6/2008

Hello Duck Fans!

I know it has been a while since someone has written an entry for the Duck Diary, but I will try the best I can to bring it back into style. I will have big shoes to fill since the last person to do the duck diary was our memorable senior from last year, Eric Pickard. For those of you who are having trouble remembering Eric, he was the guy grinding it out on the courts last year with a glove, yes a glove, and looked like probably the biggest cross between an elf and a World’s Strongest Man competitor. He did a great job for us and we all miss him here.

Anyway, now onto business, before I give a little recap of how our season is going let me give you a little introduction to our team for this year. We have a very young team this year compromised of one junior, six sophomores and two frosh. Our lone junior is Mike Myrhed, team genius and title holder of team’s lowest body fat percentage. For the sophomores, I will start by introducing our two Spanish speaking amigos, because anytime you see them they probably are coming at you in pairs both on and off the court. They are Paco (Francisco for the ladies) Gallardo from Mexico, and Marcos Verdasco from Spain. Next up we have Alex “Waffle” Cornelissen from Belgium (the nickname should make sense by now) and Stephen “the punisher” Wiechert, known for his brute strength and being one of two Oregon homegrown products. The final two are Geoff “skeletor” Embry known for his sleek physique and finally, yours truly. Our two freshman for this year are Doug “Mr. Well Actually/crazed Denver (insert sport here) fanatic” Mayeda and our team version of a Man-Child, Duncan MacDonald-Korth.

Now that introductions are out of the way, let me catch you up on how Duck Tennis has been doing. We started off the year strong with three straight wins over Weber State, Idaho, and Eastern Washington, and in all three, we captured the doubles point, an area which we have improved on greatly from last year. Our last two matches came down to the wire, losing a heartbreaker to Sacramento State and a close decision to Cal Poly. But despite the losses we are regrouping and planning to come back strong and get the sour taste out of our mouth. We have been having a great week of practice; guys are being loud, throwing their bodies out on the line and just trying to improve every day.

Before I go, I will share one practice story with you that I think is worth mentioning About a week ago during point play in practice, we were playing team singles with Geoff and I playing against Marco and Paco. Geoff was absolutely owning Marco in a point, and topped it off by hitting a perfect short angle which Marco tried desperately to track down - needless to say, Marco didn’t get there. But rather than give Geoff credit for his money hands and finesse, Marco decided to keep the spotlight on himself and go for an unprecedented wall dive in the Student Tennis Center. For those of you who have never seen Marco, he is built like a bull, weighing in at a not too shabby 215 pounds, so you can imagine that when this meat train got going toward the wall there was no stopping him. The impact caught the attention of everyone present, and the result was Marco lying on his back and huge hole in our wall. That is the kind of dedication you can expect to see from Duck Tennis in the coming years, so hopefully you can all find the time to witness it in person because we would all love to have you there for our matches.

Now what to look for next week: we will be heading to Fresno State tomorrow to take on the Hawaii Warriors and Fresno State Bulldogs, tough matches? Yes. Can we rebound and improve our record to 5-2? I think so. Can Marco top his road record of eating a cheesecake from the cheesecake factory in under a minute? We will find out....All to come next week on another edition of Duck Diary. Thanks for reading Duck fans and as always, Go Ducks!

Romeo “Clincher” Mortera