This One Time At Tennis Camp

It was love-love at first sight. Four hilarious ladies, two young gentlemen coaches, and a weekend of amateur tennis (us) in between bouts professional comedy (us, again) made for an epic and unforgettable weekend, which counted as my latest weekly adventure. 

I am not a tennis player. Though I do own a racket, it has seen a tennis court approximately 7 times in the past 5 years. I am lucky if the racket makes contact with the tennis ball before my knees or face make contact with the tennis court. So when I found out a few friends had signed up for a weekend of tennis camp at Newk's Tennis Ranch in NB (total coincidence that I live here, BTW, and yes that is the Men At Work song playing on their website) I was sure I'd be the worst of 24 campers or however many normally show up. I wanted to skip the camp part and just show up for happy hour, as I prefer to do things I am good at that require little to no learning or practice. Tennis is not one of them. Turns out I didn't need to be afraid, as everyone else except my friends and I canceled due to the crazy inclement weather in Texas. The four of us essentially got much needed private lessons all weekend. The quote of the first night by one of the coaches after watching us attempt to play tennis in jeans and boots was "[you girls] are a unique box of chocolates." We took that as a compliment.

Thankfully, the snow melted and the weather cooperated after Friday. It was in the low 60s and sunny the entire time. The weekend entailed one hour of tennis on Friday night, six hours of tennis on Saturday and two and a half hours of tennis on Sunday. I thought I'd get sick of it but I loved every minute and not just because we had the coaches making up tennis drinking games for us by Saturday afternoon. I think the drinking drills actually improved our skills, as we apparently do much better when you add a serious reward or consequence, like Bud Light. We even came up with a very special game for the coaches, they had to play a game of tennis with their left hands while holding Miller High Life tall boys in their right hands. The loser of each point had to drink and the first to 10 won. They claimed this was first for them, but I didn't believe them.

I won. Not really, I did win being the only one not hungover on Sunday.

The coaches were awesome and a ton of fun, mainly because they laughed at us the entire time and were still able to instruct us between laughing fits. It wasn't me, my friends are hilarious and make me look like the quiet and shy one (see above photo). And we did all learn quite a bit about tennis, too. I now know what a "continental grip" is and can actually hit the ball over the next at least 50% of the time. Whether or not it lands inside the lines is another weekend of camp, at least. We had an official awards ceremony on Sunday. I won the "special award" for my fancy outfits (and footwork). Pretty proud of that one, it's now on my fridge.

Even though I am still not great, or even good for that matter, I loved learning a new sport that is active and social. I plan to keep playing whenever I can. Got a racket? Let's some play tennis, love! Lord knows I could use the practice.