Feel the Burn

Eugene Wallingford recently wrote a couple blogs (Got To Begin Again and Anger and Starting Again) about the effort to get back into a sport after spending some time away. The timing was perfect for my own experience with getting back into tennis. I started playing semi-regularly back in middle school and put in four years on my high school team. When I went to college, initially, I played in intramurals and some with the tennis club because UNI does not have a men's tennis team (hurray Title IX!) for me to attempt to walk-on. As the years went on, I played less and less as I got busier and busier. I had only played a handful of times the last couple of years.

This fall, Curt, a friend of mine, really wanted to play against me after he had played all summer. We started playing once or twice a week. However, I continued my bad habits of playing lazily and not hitting amazing shots. Also, he always wanted to play matches, sometimes with only a few minutes of warming up, rather than to simply hit around. Matches are great, but when I have not played much in the last couple of years, I prefer some time to rediscover my shots. My shots started coming back, but it was rather irregular. My serve never was better than mediocre, my forehand became decent, and my backhand was hit or miss depending on the day. Towards the end of the warm weather, I started to return to the net and volley some. It was not exceptionally pretty. If I am not mistaken, I believe I completely whiffed on a couple overheads. Still, it was a lot of fun getting back on the courts.

This spring semester, I am taking Personal Wellness because it is required to graduate as part of the Liberal Arts Core. Think of Personal Wellness as a health class lecture combined with an aerobics lab which is P.E. without the fun games. You would think they could at least let us play one day of dodgeball. I could write an entire blog ranting on how much I dislike this aspect of Personal Wellness. However, there is also a skill lab for which I am taking Beginner's Tennis. I have only seen them offer Intermediate Tennis once in the four years I have attended UNI. Thus, it is tennis in which there are a lot of unskilled players, but at least I get to play.

We have spent the last few weeks hitting against the wall in a gymnasium because it is cold outside. There was snow falling today as I went to class. The nice thing is while the new people are learning to hit forwards, backhands, serves, and volleys semi-consistently, I am working on regaining my previous prowess. My forward is back to decent, my backhand is decent and still hit or miss, and my volley shots are pretty bad. However, my serve is coming back strong! My overhead was looking pretty good too when the instructor called me out to demonstrate to the class yesterday. Let us just say I was a bit nervous considering it had been a few years since I had consistently hit overheads. I think the service practice helped though because I looked pretty good. Now I am looking forward to going outside onto the courts so I can start working on really playing with my serve.

So what is the point of all this rambling? We started doing some footwork and movement drills at the beginning of class this week. I love them and am putting in the 120% I usually do with such things. The result of this is I have noticed my legs being slightly sore along with some fatigue in the days following. The weird thing is I find myself smiling when I feel the soreness or fatigue. I actually am finding that I missed it. I am not sure whether it is because the discomfort is somehow connected in my brain with the joy of playing tennis or if it is because I am realizing I am really starting to get back into this. Either way, my legs are a bit tired and I would not have it any other way. Now if it would just warm up outside so I could play tennis outside of class with friends.