Hey fans, friends, athletes, Whitman community, and general populous!
Welcome to the Whitman Mens Tennis Team Blog, hopefully we can keep you updated with the team via various authors and perspectives on a fairly frequent basis, because that would be awesome.
I’m not going to backtrack into any other matches really, i think we will start here in the present, but maybe also this past week because we’re kind of in a certain tone that will be carrying us through the next few weeks.
Basically, this last weekend and this upcoming week is a huge focus on getting into gear for our immensely intense and important spring break trip. before i go into what our spring break consists of, lets start with our prep plans. As many of you may (or may not) know, our team is a family, not like a family, not sort of a family, we ARE a family. We have been emphasizing this through many team building events and communication activities. it’s something i really appreciate about the team and it has helped me get through my Whitman career thus far. So yes, practicing being supportive and close to each other, so when we are out playing matches, we can be cheering and working with full emotion and intensity.
Our team is also fairly large in comparison to many teams other schools may carry. we have so many players that can play almost any position in any lineup, that is how deep our team goes in terms of depth and talent. its amazing. its also amazing at how close of friends we can be while competing against eachother in practice and in team ladder tournaments. so yes, we are deep, its a huge asset in that we can play many conference and non-conference matches during our season. because of the D3 rules that we have to abide by, we can only play a certain number of “Dates”, which are weekends in which we play matches. So if we play 2 matches on one “date” it still counts as one weekend and not two. so when we split our squad, we can play tons of matches during a weekend and still have many other dates to play other teams.
Ok, so now our preparation. it started with our matches against Montana and UPS this past weekend. it was the first time this season that we had officially split the squad. Some of the guys played against Montana at home and fought hard and were able to test the limits of their game. and the other half got to show the conference that our WHOLE team is a force to be reckoned with. though i feel like the team that played UPS was a bit nervous in that it was the first time splitting the squad, we all showed great composure in fighting nerves at the beginning and were able to pull off the win convincingly. as we will later see, the ability to win with a split squad is such a great asset to a team, and it also allows more people to grow in their game mentally and to grow with confidence.
These weeks leading up to spring break are probably best described as a molding and perfecting, training period in that we are all working really hard in order to play our specific games at our best. this means we have to be fit enough and strong enough to get through a strenuous 2 weeks. this might be easy to say, but hey, it can suck sometimes! like really really badly. We as a team do a workout series that seriously kicks some serious butt. i hate it at times, and love it at times. but there are certain workout procedures that i dread everytime i do them. things such as the “beep test” make me want to punch a bunny. ok not really because its really good for me and everyone else, but sometimes, ughhhh. other workout are exhausting, but hey, it will all pay out in the end, fo sho.
Hey, we have a match this weekend, aka TOMORROW! at 3pm! you should be there! its probably the biggest match we have left at home. you should come. but yeah, spring break will be excellently fun in seattle, portland, and hilton head, South Carolina. We will definitely keep you updated on our lives. and our matches of course! Hopefully i will see you all in the coming weeks at the courts!!! Thanks for supporting the Fighting Squirrels.
David
