Let the ACC matches BEGIN: Florida State

Aaaaaannnd here we go: the crazy schedule has officially begun. ACC season has started. To kick it all off, we travelled to Florida, namely Tallahassee, to take on the Florida State Seminoles. This time of year is never easy...the classes missed start to rack up, and the grumblings of unhappy professors do not help the stress levels, but, for those few crucial hours of our matches, we can put academics aside, and focus JUST on tennis. Today, our match was scheduled for 4 PM, even though it said  3 PM on our schedule for some reason (JAMIE!!!), which meant a looong day. After a hefty breakfast as usual for me (I will spare the description of the epic amount of food consumed) we hit the courts at 10:45 for a short warm-up, so we wouldn't be sitting around all day. Then we paid a visit to our favorite ever-present sandwich shop, Jimmy John's, whose reliable sandwiches we simply cannot have enough of... although lately, Jersey Mike has been giving Jimmy a run for his money in terms of team popularity...

After lunch, we went back to the court for our ACTUAL warm-up, which was actually quite uneventful, and went smoothly as usual. And THEN the matches began. Florida State is historically always a tough team, and is one of those awful places to play; the crowd jeers and screams, and most of the players get super-pumped and start yelling all sorts of strange things into your face. Thus, it was very helpful when we won the doubles point, with our clutch duos of Jess/Mal and Melis/Amanda emerging victorious to clinch our doubles. Elz and I had a little mini-comeback but ended up not winning in the end, but at least made them SWEAT REALLY REALLY hard to beat us. So, overall, we went into the singles on a good note.

The singles was hard-fought on each court, and we ended victoriously on most courts...Amanda was an absolute beast, beating her opponent in approximately 7 seconds, and putting us ahead 2-0 in the match. Jess was next to finish, losing a tough match to a strong opponent. I didn't get to see any of her match, but in the one point I saw, Jess smacked an overhead winner, which was ridiculously huge, and inspired me to win the next game in my own match, which made me the 3rd match to finish. I was SO happy to win because my opponent had this whole CROWD watching her, and they literally bellowed every time she won a point...which was fine, until they started screaming for my double faults, which I thought was a little much. Ellah, my roomate/doubles partner/fellow sophomore was the clincher, beating her French freshman in straight sets, and improving her spring record to an UNDEFEATED 12-0. Get it girl, get it get it girlll!! The last two matches to finish were Melis (in straight) and Mal (in three sets), who both had annoyingly streaky opponents, making it difficult to get a rhythm, but they both pulled it out, to give us on overall 6-1 win. Not a bad way to start out the ACC matches!

Till next time...LET'S GO DUKE!!!

-Reka