Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

Captaining USTA tennis teams drains the life force out of me. A little part of my soul dies every second I spend on captaining. It is exhausting. I would never advise anyone to captain a recreational adult tennis team. It sucks. In so many ways.

My dog likes to circle behind me as I’m making my way around the house when she thinks we’re about to go on a road trip. I think it’s the herding mentality in her Sheltie DNA; she’s making sure she has me in her sights at all times and that I’m on the right path and not straying from the plan.

“Nope! You are not going back up the stairs, Christy, because I will block you from turning around! All forty pounds of me. That tops off at your knees. When I sit.

“Darn the construction limitations of my dog-body!”

Captaining a team is like herding. Constantly, constantly, constantly herding. Sometimes it seems like I’m the only person in a face-to-face interaction that remembers the part where I asked you about playing on this team next spring season and you said yes. And then a few months later when I blithely check in as a simple formality, you don’t have any recollection of that conversation and have joined another team.

See, a great captain would have had all these player-tennis team commitments set in stone, signed in blood complete with monthly reminders. I merely, haplessly continue to play this violin as the boat is sinking.

A player shared with me a story about the turmoil she faced from her former teammates when she left their non-USTA tennis team. She concluded the tale with her opinion that people USTA team-hopped all the time, and no one seemed to care whereas in other cities-spanning tennis leagues, it was considered blasphemous to change teams.

Um, I wouldn’t say exactly that no one seems to mind when people leave USTA teams.

I wrote in January about wondering who would un-friend me on Facebook in a year’s time, i.e. who wouldn’t be on my tennis teams, anymore. Heh, it didn’t even take a year in some cases…or for the season to start in other instances before the relationship was doomed. I am amazing.

Somebody wise once told me that you could do everything for a player, everything they wanted including wiping their butts for them, and they would still find a reason to leave.

O-kay, she did not use the phrase “wiping their butts for them,” but when I think back on what she said, that phrase is always included. Because that’s how my mind works. And now I get to share it with you!

I wouldn’t be so silly as to presume I’m an innocent bystander when people leave my teams. Players should absolutely go where they believe they’ll get to play more, for example. Plus, my “natural charm” is not for everyone. I see things slightly askewed, um. And I can be…intense, I’m told. So people say. Rumor has it.

However, I’ve finally had to come to grips that sometimes, something bigger was going on that had little to do with me personally. People are going to people.

And that’s just the way that goes. It’s…life. People are going to pop in and fade out…and maybe pop back in and then fade right on out. Heck, I consider most of the players on my teams as free agents whom I don’t ever really know where we stand that season till they inexplicably sign up for our team again the next USTA league. And then when they don’t sign up for the following year, I’m like, “HAH. I knew it!!”

Here’s the pot of gold at the end of this post: There are a handful of players who get me. Who aren’t scared of me. Who will stick with me. And who politely decline other captains’ invitations to go play for their teams because they’re already on a USTA 18 and Over weekday team and will be for the foreseeable future, but thank you very much though.

To those players: thank you very much. It’s really only a matter of time till I screw up our relationship (like even more so to the point of no return) and in the meantime, I do think there’s something wrong with y’all for continuing to play for someone who isn’t always easy to deal with, but…thank you. 🙂