The sound of opening brand new tennis balls fills my ears with a powerful pssht. Today is another game day, this time we – the girls’ tennis team - are up against our rivals from Oak Ridge. I am playing a doubles game with a powerful teammate who can hit fast, deep serves. And yet, it’s me who is serving to the opponent. About two feet from the middle of the baseline, I bounce the fresh neon-yellow ball three times before tossing it up into the air. As the ball reaches its apex and starts to descend, my arm arcs up to slice serve it over the lofty net. The ball kicks off the ground away from my opponents and right smack into one of the holes of the fence. Fifteen love.
Once I’m on the left of my partner, I smacked a serve that looked like an absolute value graph. But learning from my previous serve, my opponent had her guard up so she had an amazing on-the-rise cross-court return, with me persistently rallying with her until I had the chance to use my topspin lob. Seeing that it had risen to the height of two tennis courts on top, my opponents is confident that it will be out until it slowly falls down and softly thumps up and down vertically on the green asphalt court. Astonished to see that I had successfully made it in, both my partner and opponents congratulated me with utmost praise and respect.
After an hour and a half-hour, we finally ended the match with a score of 6-4, 3-6, tiebreaker 10-7.