Summer of Tennis

Alyssa's friend talked her into taking a summer tennis class this year. It was taught by the local high school tennis coaches. She was out there playing tennis for 2-3 hours 3 times a week with matches once a week in the evening. She had no idea how much she would like playing. She was very much a beginner in June when she started but has improved so much since then. She played in an end of summer tournament in the end of July and ended up taking 2nd place for her level. She was so excited to get a trophy from her first ever tournament.

Here she is with her friend, who won a medal at the same tournament.

She tried out for the high school team in early August and was thrilled to find out that she made the team.

She had a good season, moving herself on up the ladder throughout the season. She played JV(there were 6 seniors on the team which didn't leave a lot of room for varsity positions). She felt so bad when she beat one of the seniors and got pushed ahead of her in the line up. Because of traveling and COVID, the teams' #1 varsity singles player was out for the first month of the season. This hurt the whole team because everyone was playing up a level. So when Alyssa started passing other girls up, she got as high as the #1 JV singles position and was playing against seniors and girls with a lot more playing experience than she had. It got frustrating for her sometimes, but she tried to stay positive through all of the losses. 

The highlight of her season was the team trip to St. George for a state invitational tournament. She got to play doubles throughout the tournament with a girl that she plays really well with. They had a lot of fun and even won a few of their matches. They ended up winning a medal because they placed first in the "silver" bracket of their tournament(the gold bracket had the top four teams after the first day and the silver had the bottom 4- In other words, they got 5th place out of 8 schools). Here she is with some of her JV teammates

She is sad that the season is over and we are trying to decide what the best course of action is in order to help her improve enough to make varsity next year. Unfortunately, the snowy, cold winter here limits us quite a bit. Her coaches have said so many great things about her improvement and I think they are looking forward to having her on the team for the next 3 years.