The tennis season has finally started and last Friday we got another opportunity to face another division 1 school from Eastern Washington. I must say that overall we did a great job! It was a beautiful but hot day and our match started at 2 pm so we knew that the challenge of hot weather was there. On the other hand, we also know that this is more of an advantage for us when we play teams from the mainland that are not used to the „Hawaiian “ conditions.
It was 2 pm and the match just started. The Eagles came out strong in doubles and surprised us with the energy and intensity they brought especially at the beginning of the match. We started a bit too slow maybe also because we did not play a match for about 3 weeks. Out of 3 doubles matches we only won on the first position which meant that the doubles point went to Eagles and were up 1-0.
I had a feeling that we have much more to offer and that we will be getting better with every point we play. We just need to come up with good energy to get into it a little bit. And that happened in singles after a couple of minutes. Mile Matic started playing insane and did not drop a single game! This is very rare in tennis when you „double bagel“ your opponent so with Mile´s win the score was 1-1.
A half an hour later, Arthur Perry got the job done and Finnegan Heber did so too. I see these guys working hard every single day and I am glad that thanks to all the hard work they deliver great results in their first season as Sharks! It is not easy to get used to the environment and rules of college tennis but these guys look like they were born to play college tennis!
Moving on, the Sharks only need one more singles win to get to four points and get the overall win. And the clincher was again Adam Vasir! Adam and his simple game where he keeps hitting balls until the opponent mentally gives up did an amazing job once again! After Adam´s win, the score was 4-1 for Sharks but we still had 2 more matches to finish.
Me and Yannick Heritzeberg were the last two matches left and I am not going to lie, it took us way longer to grab the win! Yannick played some amazing tennis towards the end of the match and brought great energy which all the spectators loved!
Overall score 6-1 for the Sharks! I am grateful for this team since these guys are not just great players but also great people that I love to be around! We always create the right environment that we want to play in and that is probably our biggest strength.
Next week, we are going to play 7 matches within 12 days in California. I am looking forward to this trip!
It is time to bring the SHARKS to the mainland!
GO SHARKS and always FEAR THE FIN!
