After Atalanta

I have had many moments of frustration playing USTA league tennis over the years, from head case partners who enjoy hitting opponents as an intimidation technique to snippy opponents who don't remember the score and so you have to go all the way back and replay the third set to dealing with stacked line-ups. But today was a refreshing change--and not just because I won and not just because I won by one point! Though that did feel nice. But my doubles partner and I played against a very nice team. Not overly sweet nice where they try to talk to you all the time--'cause that's annoying too. But fair. They never questioned any call and there were some close ones. (We were playing fair too, though; but that's not the way it always happens.) It was a really close match and no one lost it or got snippy or slammed a racket (not even me!). And we ended up having to play a tie break to decide the third and final set (we had ten minutes left). At 5-5 in the breaker (first to 7 b...

I just got back from USTA districts. It was my first districts experience and I have to say it was very interesting. First of all, it was very suburban hetero. Most of the teams had matching outfits down to their pink Under Armour wristbands. I saw a lot of Coach purses and flowery tennis bags. Our team is about half lesbian and we were the only queer women there. Someone from another team asked one of our non-gay, divorced players where we were from and when she found out we weren't local and had stayed 2 nights in a hotel she said, "God bless your husbands!" Team member replied, "I don't have a husband." Only two players on our team have husbands actually. Non-husbanded women must be an anomaly in the world of these women. So it was an interesting examination of middle-class white women (I saw maybe two women of color the whole weekend) and how they participate in recreational sport. But the big drama of the weekend happened when the captains of my team at...