Q: How did you get started with tennis?

A: I started when I was in kindergarten. I lived in Idaho, and the high school was right down the street from us and they had tennis courts, so we would just walk down there and play tennis, even though I wasn’t that good at the time.

Q: How do you feel your team played last games, and how can you improve?

A: I think our team played really well last game. We won 7-2 out of all of our nine matches. I think we’ve been preparing well because we moved up a league and we’ve been preparing a lot to try and win this time.

Q: Are you close to your teammates? How do you bond?

A: Yes, I’m very close to my teammates. We’ve only known each other for, about four weeks but we’ve already gotten to know each other well, and we have team dinners every Wednesday night, and we just sit around and eat food. It’s probably not that healthy for us, but it’s fun.

Q: What is your favorite memory with your teammates so far?

A: I really liked it when we were at Paytin Janda’s house, and that was the first team dinner I had ever been to. It was so funny because we were eating outside and these wasps kept following us around. So it was just a bunch of high school girls screaming, running around trying to get away from the wasps.

Q: What does your coach do to motivate you?

A: Our coach is pretty awesome. Even though none of us like it, we do footwork drills all the time because he knows that in order to be good at tennis you have to have good footwork. So we’d run the bleachers a lot and we’d do ladder drills. It’s not fun, but I know he’s just doing it to motivate us to work harder and win more matches.

Q: How are you preparing for the next game?

A: We work on footwork most of the time and do running and drills just to make sure we’re ready for the three-day match.

Q: Are there times you feel unmotivated?  Why?

A: I say it at the time, like before tennis. Things like “I’m done, I’m going to quit, I can’t do this anymore.” But once I’m done playing tennis it’s actually like “Wow, I’m so refreshed.” I actually feel better about my footwork and my agility and my ability to actually hit the ball. So I’d say yes, I do get tired but at the same time once I’m finished I’m like “Oh wait, can we go play more?”

by Kylie Chastain, Kayleigh Goff, Shampave Kandiah & Brandon Quach