Wawona

I hadn't been looking forward to going to Fresno for the state tournament for our tennis team, but in retrospect, I definitely needed the break. In a way, I have been working non-stop without a break for a while. I was able to sleep much more than my usual five hours per night, and playing at Fresno brought back a part of my old self I think I lost when I gave up tennis during my junior year.

I thought I had rediscovered tennis when I went to Stanford, but upon returning home, I began to wonder if it was a fluke. I injured my left wrist at Stanford, and when I returned, I was still playing rather shakily. I had been playing great over the summer, but now I began to wonder if I had been simply playing better because of the whole Jake situation -- and if I hadn't been playing for myself.

Fresno answered my questions. My first match was against a girl I had played twice before her tragic family affair (which everyone in the tennis world had whispered about back then) and she stopped playing for a while. By the time she had returned to competing, I had already stopped playing tournaments. I played abysmally horrible in that match, but I vowed I would not let the same thing happen again.

I played a total of four matches the past two days, two matches per day. To my old tournament-playing self, that would have been nothing. But I have gotten incredibly out of shape this past year, and when I played my second match, my lack of endurance and rusty ability to focus took its toll. Energized, I quickly took the first set 6-3 and was up the second 4-3. That was when I began to lose focus and feel fatigued -- she brought the second set to 6-4. I wasn't sure if I could handle a three-setter match at that point, but our team needed one more win to advance to the next round, and it looked like our No. 4 singles would have a difficult chance of winning her match. Fortunately, my teammates were by my side next to the fence. A gave me some advice -- it really was simple advice that I should have figured out on my own, and when the bastard assistant coach of the other team barked at her to stop giving advice to teammates, I got up and proceeded to cream the girl 6-1 in the third, thus guaranteeing our team's win.

The third match I played was against an old friend who was once ranked No. 1 in Northern California back when we played in the 12's division. She has lost some of her agility, but she is still one of the most precise and focused players I have ever played against. The score was very ugly, but in all honesty, I was pretty happy with how I played. The match against her school was very close -- it could have easily gone either way, but in the end, we lost 3-4, and so our fourth match would be to see who would place 11th place out of the 96 schools at the tournament.

The fourth match was full of its ironies -- the situation was almost identical to last year. Same two schools, once again both playing to see who would win 11th place. Last year, we were tied at 3-3, and it all came down to my match versus this year's No. 1 singles. We split sets before I won the ten-point tiebreaker in place of the third set, 10-0, thus bringing our team to a win of 4-3.

This year, A dealt with that girl. As for me, I lost my first set 6-1, playing terribly and scattering errors everywhere. But something clicked in the second set. I managed to turn the set around and captured the second set 7-6. At that point, I thought we had already clinched 11th place, but then my coach informed me during the five-minute break that the score was currently 3-2, but it looked like our No. 4 Singles might lose her match and bring the score to 3-3. So once again, I became the deciding match.

I had forgotten that feeling completely. Your entire team is cheering behind you, but you barely notice the noise outside the fence. It all comes down to you and the opponent across the net. My opponent pissed me off -- she made several questionable calls. There was one game in the third set when we argued over the score. I had been calling out the score, and she still insisted she had already won the game while I argued that we had just reached deus. Thank goodness I was pissed off at her enough that I refused to budge before finally the ref came on court and we had to replay the game starting from 30-30.

(Afterwards, my coach informed that I had been right about the score the whole time. Stupid baka.)

In the end, I won the third set 7-5, capturing 11th place for the team. When we had a team meeting in the shade afterwards, my coach asked me to announce my score to the team. "1-6, 7-6, 7-5." "Do you know what that shows?" my coach asked the team. "It shows someone who never gave up and kept fighting until the end."

At Fresno, I became very close to my teammates. I met many of my tennis friends who I had not seen for a year, and I was able to avoid thinking of academics and college completely.

But most importantly, I found myself again, without even thinking of Jake at all.