Tennis defeats Valley Christian

College Prep vs. Valley Christian- October 2nd, 2008
League Record (3-0)

Today even the trickiest of obstacles could not keep the ladies of your CPS tennis team from dominating, or as Annie termed it "from beastin' the VCVs". Their mascot is the Vikings, which is where that extra V comes from in case you were wondering. It was a little weird playing a team all the way from Dublin on our home courts of Chabot because their school is all the way out next to where I live in Castro Valley, but no one said this new league would make any sense. Two things seemed to be working against today: sickness and bad weather. I was actually at the Walnut Creek Kaiser this morning when it started raining, and decided to call Coach Wendell from the hospital to see whether or not the show would go on. I ended up having a pretty awkward phone call:

Me: Hey coach. I was wondering whether or not we still have a match today.
Wendell: Yeah...... why wouldn't we?
Me: but it's raining
Wendell: What?
Me: the ground is wet.
Wendell: No it's not.
Me: Oh. Just kidding.

so I guess it rained in Walnut Creek but not in Oakland. The weather was still pretty foreboding though-- cloudy skies and cold temperature. The gray clouds looked like they were about to burst at any moment.

Anyways, we had 4 of our usual players missing from our lineup today due to sickness and/or injury. I'll be honest-- missing that many players made us, or at least me, a little nervous because we did not know what to expect from the Vikings of red and black. However, the worrying proved to be unnecessary. We already had the match in our pockets within the first 45 minutes when all 3 singles players donut-ed their opponents. It was so impressive that I can now make a non-existant verb out of a noun. Our doubles matches, however, were a little bit more tricky because most of the girls had to compete at higher positions than normal. None of the girls complained though and took their challenges as opportunities, and performed well. What was especially impressive to me was watching our returning sophomore player, Laura, walk out onto the courts confidently. She barely knew how to swing a racket this time a year ago, and Wendell and I were talking about how impressive it was to be watching Laura already be playing at #1 doubles. In fact, she was wearing her self-made team t-shirt from last year with the word NEWBIE on the back. I laughed at the irony.

I forgot to write down our opponents names. For anyone who's curious, they should be up on the team website shortly after I email them to Duane tomorrow.

Scores:
Singles:
#1. C. Lusher vs. Viking#1 (W) 6-0, 6-0
#2. A. Wang vs. Viking #2 (W) 6-0, 6-0
#3. M. El Baze vs. Viking #3 (W) 6-0, 6-0

Doubles:
#1. M. Iyer & L. Barry vs. Viking Duo #1 (L) 3-6, 5-7
#2. S. Yazdi & S. Ribet vs. Viking Duo #2 (L) 0-6, 1-6

Exhibition:
#3. A. Wong & G. Gallegos vs. Viking Duo #3 (L) 1-6, 2-6

As you can see, we are still maintaining our undefeated record, and will be playing our 4th league match tomorrow at Bentley, who should be a pretty tough team to beat. Stay tuned, because another writeup is to come. As for closing up on today's match, everyone eagerly left early to watch the Vice-Presidential Debate on TV, including me. Was I the only one who noticed how often Sarah Palin said "a heckuv a lot" and "daarrrrrrn right" ?

Until tomorrow, hug a tennis player! They'll need the encouragement for tomorrow's big match vs. Bentley. Our next home game is on Tuesday vs. Athenian, which will be our 2nd time playing the Owls of Danville. Keep your schedules open because it should be a good match to drop by and watch. I'll give directions to the Chabot Racquet Club in the near future, because everyone who hasn't been to one of our matches yet is running out of opportunities. We have 4 home games and 9 matches altogether left before we head into BCLs!

Tiffany