Monday Morning Match Memories

MMMM #10: Bethany Christian vs. NorthWood, Sectional Final 2008

In the past several weeks, I've written about a handful of matches that have stirred up different emotional responses for me. With Penn and Fairfield, pure joy. With Lakeland in 2004, embarrassment and anger. With Goshen in 2003, disappointment and bewilderment. With NorthWood, Triton, Joel and Wes, pride.

This match, against NorthWood (probably our closest matched rival), in the Sectional final, to complete our season long goal...well, I think that most people would know where the emotion was going to fall. If we lost, we were going to be bitterly disappointed. And if we won, then it would be pure joy, greater even than the Penn win, or any other win for that matter. Because a win in this match would bring home the first Sectional title ever for Bethany Christian. We'd put a new banner on the wall in the gym with a win in this match.

And so we entered this match, expecting either joy or disappointment.

We were playing with a sense of belief, I think. In the morning, the Fairfield match had scared us all senseless. But coming through and winning that at the very end, in a third set tiebreak no less, I think that cemented our belief that we could and perhaps should win the Sectional.

I wish I could bottle up the spirit with which we warmed up for the final match. There was a looseness about the warmup, guys laughing and moving and getting ready. And yet, within that looseness was a concentrated confidence. We worked on parts of our game that we'd need to be successful for the final. Johnny and Jeremy talked doubles strategy ahead of their big match. Luke went into his concentrated shell, beginning to envision the match ahead of him. It felt like a day spent with someone you are "comfortably" in love with. We weren't doing things to impress each other, we weren't trying to falsely build up emotion, we weren't scared and nervous in front of each other. We were each working our own way into this match, and everybody was ready to support one another in that.

I, however, was like a chicken with my head cut off. You see, my short's zipper broke. I only have like 4 pairs of the plaid shorts that I wear for every tennis match. And so at the end of tennis season the zipper had been opened and closed so many times that the teeth were wearing out. So as I was hitting with Jonny or Jared (can't quite remember), then all the sudden I realized my fly was open. I reached down to zip it up and the zipper just went up and down the one side, not connecting to the other at all. I was super embarrassed and went off to try to figure out some way to figure it out.

Right as the match was starting my wife arrived with new shorts. So I ran to the bathroom and changed while everyone was warming up. I was glad to be familiar with the opponent, otherwise I would have felt really bad running off. So this distracted my mind, and I don't remember many specifics about the beginning of the match. I never remember much about the beginning of the matches really, there is so much going on and I'm trying to get a handle on each court. What I do remember is that we started well on every court except for Luke's.

For me then, about at this point, where we started well and looked good, I started to realize what this match was about for me. It was about unfulfilled expectations. That sounds like a bad thing, but it wasn't.

I expected to be tense throughout the entire match. I wasn't tense at all. Daniel and Mikey made quick work of number two doubles to get us one point. Jared played about his best match of the season to get us another quick point. Johnny and Jeremy played amazingly well to bring us to the brink of victory. In fact, the only point at which I did feel tense was Sectional point, when NorthWood had a second serve and we had a chance to win the Sectional. And you know why I was tense? I didn't want our opponent to double fault. I wanted to win it outright, with an overhead or passing shot or something that I could cheer for. A double fault just feels bad.

So one unfulfilled expectation was tension.

Another expectation I had for my first tennis Sectional championship was energy and emotion. It's weird, in 2007 when we reached the Sectional final, I felt liked the team really lacked the emotional energy to compete in that match, but I felt like I had a lot of fight and was trying to convey that to each of the players. In 2008 in the Sectional championship, I felt very flat and exhausted while it seemed to me like all of the guys playing were full of energy. Got to be honest, I'd rather have it that way. But it was really weird.

So, a second unfulfilled expectation was energy.

Finally, when the double fault hit the net, and we had won the Sectional championship, when we had reached the goal we had worked so hard for, when we had finally become champions, I expected to feel pure ecstasy. Pure joy. More than any other match we had ever played. But that was not what I felt. As I spun in circles getting congratulations from smiling parents and fans, I was simply relieved. The emotion that defined this Sectional final for me was relief. We hadn't screwed up, God hadn't left us out in the cold after all that work, we hadn't played poorly, we hadn't lost in a three set killer match. We had, indeed, succeeded. And it felt like a weight off my shoulders.

So, a third unfulfilled expectation was joy. It was instead a relief.

I also felt stupid, shaking everybody's hand. I felt like all of you players had earned the Sectional. I didn't feel like I had done much beside provide the opportunity for you to come out and play. As the reporters from the papers talked to me, I tried to describe to them the effort that all of you had put in order to get us to this point. I tried to talk about the seniors working hard, the JV players who pushed them to play their best, who made them play pressure matches back in the beginning of August. I tried to tell them about the extra miles that we ran, the time people stayed after practice just to play, and they wrote everything down. But I didn't feel like it was enough. It felt anticlimactic, like this writer didn't realize the height of this accomplishment.

Shaking the tournament director's hand, I realized that he didn't know how much we'd put into this. Seeing my father-in-law smiling I knew that he didn't know how much we'd put into this. Hugging my wife I knew that though she knew the hours I'd put in, she didn't even realize the hours you all had spent playing, running, lifting, hitting, agonizing over this Sectional championship. Nobody got it. Nobody.

Except you guys. Even at El Camino, when the staff who had tried to play tennis on the back side of the Goshen courts while Jonny and Luke wrapped up their matches congratulated me on the victory, I simply waved a hand and said "well, thanks." I was just interested in sharing the moment with you. Only you guys understand what it means, what it takes, and the way the whole season comes right down to that one day.

And what a relief it is to walk away champions.