Our Favorite Tennis Stories
I decided it was a good idea to share with the world some of the stories, "legends" to us,
of things that have happened to us Reitz Tennis players. Personally, I consider us a very
tight knit team. These stories I am about to tell have been of major impact to all of us, and
it seems that every time we get together, we always have a good laugh about our past hijinx.
So, with no further ado, here are some of our favorite stories.
The Net Incident
This story may not seem too funny to you, but it has to be one of the funniest things I have
ever seen. One day in practice in '96, we were doing this one double drill (the "go game") and it
requires the teams to switch sides when the challenging team wins three points off the champs.
Well, this year our team had some very athletic people who decided to jump over the net instead of
running around it (plus it was a way to show off). Finally, me and my partner (whose name I won't
put here, cause I don't want him to get any more embarrassed) won three points and were going to the
other side to replace the champs. Well, I cleared the net, but when I looked back I saw my partner
(not exactly the most athletic person in the world) trying to make the jump too, trying is the key word
there. I looked back and heard a "Ahhhhh!" and saw him trip on the net and descend about four feet and
kiss the concrete. OUCH. We rushed over to his side (after we were done laughing our heads off) and
our coach said,
"Hey, are you ok?" Now you know, when this is asked, most people say, of course....
His reply was, "No!" and he sat out the rest of the practice. Poor guy. He is now a Reitz Legend for
falling on his face instead of winning sectionals or something noble like that.
The Tecumseh Conflict
The same year, we had two seniors on our team who had never played tennis before. This ended
up being kind of a problem, because tennis has a strict etiquette. Well, these two were
playing a doubles match against Tecumseh in a tournament, and the Tecumseh team had two foreign
exchange students on their team. It is toward the end of the match, and it is a very close
match and it could decide how we finish as a team in the tournament. Some questionable line
calls were made, the dad of one of the players on our team starts making a scene with Tecumseh's coach,
and there are some....eh....threats being exchanged. I was in the middle of my match at this time,
and the entire crowd of about 50 people migrated down to their court. So once everyone settles down,
one of our players gets an overhead, he SLAMS it, hits it so hard it clears the fence and then he says,
"WELCOME TO AMERICA!"
This gets everyone stirred up again, there is more arguing, and finally the match ends,
and our team finishes like third or something. But I won't forget that overhead slam he had,
and all of the bickering that went on, JUST FOR A TENNIS MATCH. Those
people hate us now, and we hate them (well, not really, but I am generalizing here) just because of a
stupid, small, insignificant tennis match. Oh well, it was fun!
Email: wessel@evansville.net
