Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

I’m co-captaining two USTA teams this season – one Thursday, one Saturday – and I’ve been playing team tennis for the last few years…so what I’m saying is if anyone from either of my current USTA teams is reading this, I’m totally not talking about you, you good, strong player-woman, you.

What Captaining Means To Me:

• Getting a different answer every time you ask your player about her availability.
• Seeing how much captaining duties you can get away with heaping onto your co-captain.
• Having to foresee and forbid your players from doing non-family/non-work-related activities that will affect their availability.
• Emailing a line-up and then sitting back and waiting inevitably for players to tell you they can’t play after all.
• Never getting to put out the best line-up.
• Putting yourself in the line-up every week.
• Being the emergency sub for every match possible because people cannot be trusted (USTA requires players to play at least twice during the regular season in order to qualify to play in the play-offs…and the only reason why some captains reluctantly play twice is so they can be the emergency sub in the play-offs).
• Listening to your players list out excuses for why they lost.
• Listening to your players tell you they can never play with so-and-so.
• Listening to your players give you line-up tips.
• Having to tell players that they are actually really good at tennis.
• Putting your players in the best possible position to win.
• Feeling bad when you have to sacrifice a line for the good of the rest of the team.
• Having to reassure players that yes, they will get to play.
• Debating on whether to stack your line-up. Then getting confused on how to properly stack a line-up. Finally giving up on stacking your line-up because your head hurts.
• Getting out-captained.
• Praying your players read the email thoroughly, especially the line-up part where their names are listed.
• Micro-managing because you’ll regret not micro-managing that one time when one of your players forgets or gets confused about where the match is and what time to be at the tennis facility by.
• Research = studying an opposing team roster of players you don’t know and checking their results against more players you don’t know.
• Putting your best team/player on line one only for them to lose. Well, darn it. I guess that’s when I should have stacked.
• Having players expect to play just because they’re available. Because you’re really their tennis secretary and your job is to schedule them Fun Time when their calendar opens up.
• Spending hours staring at your roster, mindlessly clicking through the tabs of your spreadsheet, and then ultimately just putting your head in your hands. So much responsibility, so many people that could potentially be mad at you, so many ways to screw this up…

Story Time:

One of my best players had something goofy going on with her availability so we agreed to talk about it in person. The night before we were to talk, I had a nightmare she was going to tell me she would only be available for one match.

That’s right. I had a nightmare about a tennis conversation. I’m officially a weekend warrior tennis team captain.

No, I’m not making this up.

So this player I’m talking to is telling me she might be unavailable for June and July. June and July. You know, half the season and all of the play-offs. Not a big deal, right?

Right. That’s totally what the look on my face was expressing. Another captain that was passing by and this player I was conversing with both laughed at said look on my face. Because the availability of one of my best players is a laughing matter.

Then the player said she could always fly back from this other state she and her husband might be spending their summer in if we needed her to play or qualify or whatever. She paused and looked at me.

Because a normal person at this instance would say something like, “Oh, no, no! Flying back just for a silly tennis match? Don’t be ridiculous!”

…

Okay, look, let me just say this for myself. At least, I’m aware this is what a normal person would say. I should at least get brownie points for that. Knowing what is the right thing to say means I haven’t completely lost it, yet. Never mind the fact that I did not reply according to normal people script and sorta just dazedly blinked back at her…because I certainly was not going to say, “Oh, no, no…”

Hey, if she’s going to insist on flying back to play a recreational tennis match, who am I to stand in the way of what she wants to do?

Thursday USTA starts this week. Good luck, everyone!

~ Christy Vutam