USTA Playoffs and Districts

This season, I joined three USTA teams, and as luck (or skill, haha) would have it, two of the teams made it to playoffs, and one of them made it all the way to districts! Here's a cool picture of me playing with my 3.0 team, University Club of Palo Alto. (Thanks Chris!)

But wait...isn't that... Jenn in a SKIRT?! Let it be known, that's the team uniform (white top, red bottom). And I couldn't find red tennis shorts. Rick told me "wow, that's the best tennis outfit I've seen all day" the first time he saw me wearing it. And then he secretly told Chris "well, it doesn't look like her personality at all, but I was trying to be encouraging." Gee, thanks coach. But yeah, usually I wear the colors of intimidation: black tank + black shorts, GRRRRR! :-)

In the spirit of honesty, I should probably note that most pictures of me playing tennis do not look awesome. Here's a particularly horrible one of me doing everything wrong on a serve. BAD BAD BAD. Open racquet, open shoulders, AND a foot fault. So embarrassing. :-( But actually having this picture was the main thing that motivated me to work on my serve this summer!

Anyways, my 3.0 team ended up losing in the playoffs. I lost my match, excruciatingly, in the third set, when I had to retire with a calf cramp. I've never had a calf cramp before, but this one was bad. It took almost twenty minutes to even get my toes to uncurl. Lesson learned, drink more water on hot days!

My 3.5 team made it to the district championships, which were held in Folsom. The luckiest thing ever happened with our assignment of venues; Chris's team ALSO made it to districts and got assigned to Folsom! This was pretty seriously improbable, given that districts were being played all over NorCal that weekend, but it meant we got to hang out and watch each other's matches, which was fun.

Here's a shot of a slightly improved serve at districts.

Wearing the so-called "colors of intimidation" in 95 degree heat was possibly retarded, but oh well, haha. Both of our teams ended up losing, but I managed to win one doubles match with my partner Cindy, and we had a good time. Better luck next year!