The underdogs of the underdogs: Tennis team celebrates the season
As the tennis season came to an end on October 19, 2019, players had a lot to say about the season. While Yuhan Chen (12A) ranted on about the importance of “grunting” while swinging the racket in order to achieve the greatest strength and acceleration, Wyatt Huang (10A) talked about the benefit of practicing every day, even if just for fun. However, something that both players emphasized, along with a few bystanders, was the crucial role that Coach Scott Sanders played in supporting and empowering the team.
“We were always the underdogs, because we’re not really known as a tennis school. The tennis team has never had any recognition, and it didn’t really exist,” Yuhan said. “It was he [Coach Sanders] who actually told me that we actually have a tennis team. He did a lot of [recruiting]… I’ve played a lot of matches with him and never beat him so far.”
Timothy Lin (12C), Coach Sander’s previous AP Seminar student, chimed in saying, “He bought an Underarmour tennis shirt for every single player on the team, and that’s really expensive!”
Upon hearing this, Yuhan gestured wildly at his shirt—he was wearing it. “I felt really bad about it,” Yuhan added. “Mr. Sanders is really cool.”
With a recruited team of players finally in uniforms, Coach Sanders led them to the SISAC tournament after weeks of league games intense practice.
“There were a lot of participants from different schools like Suzhou, BISS, etcetera,” Wyatt said about the tournament. “Overall we did pretty well because of Mr. Sanders’ hard work. We practiced at a very minimum two times a week, and we played for fun like almost every day. He gave us advice, he gave us different types of strategies, bought us uniforms from Underarmour and it was really nice.”
Wyatt and his teammate ended up beating last season’s SISAC doubles champion, while Yuhan felt that everything was worth it winning his first match after losing to a junior professional player.
“I think one thing about tennis is that athleticism isn’t the most important factor,” Yuhan observed. “The biggest difference between tennis and other sports is that tennis has a really steep learning curve. For other sports, when I tried badminton for the first time in my life, I could at least somewhat play it. When I do ping-pong, I can somewhat hit the ball. But if you play tennis, it takes a long time to just start hitting the ball. Its really easy to injure yourself if you use improper technique, because back then I used my wrist a lot and would often injure it.”
Although our tennis team isn’t widely acknowledged at SMIC-I, each player, along with Coach Sanders, is dedicated and passionate about the sport. Just like most things, tennis takes a lot of practice to excel at. As they continue to work hard to build a name for themselves in the following seasons, make sure to cheer them on at the tennis courts! Shark Scholar also encourages you to participate— something extremely special about athletics at SMIC is the consistent reputation of outstanding sportsmanship, both within the team and during competitions. Whether it be trying out for the tennis team or any other sport, go for it!
Featured image—Yuhan hits the ball with an earsplitting grunt Courtesy of Benson Lin
by Jessie Wu