undefeated!

mmhmm... the valley christian girls team pulled through in the most intense and close match i have ever experienced against maranatha on tuesday. this is the team with the really good girl who pulls bagels off of everyone... however, i made a goal for myself to get a game off of her. well, i got TWO! yup yup... who would know that getting two games would be so exciting? it felt good.

anyway, back to the intensity of this match. for those of you that don't know how highschool tennis works, here is a quick explanation (for those who do know how this works, skip down to the next paragraph). there is a 1, 2, and 3 singles, and a 1, 2, and 3 doubles. each singles player will play each of the other team's singles player (so each will play a total of three sets... so, a total of 9 singles sets will be played by the singles players). the same goes for the doubles... a total of 9 sets. so, the team that wins the match is determined by which team wins the most sets out of 18. however, with 18 being an even number, it is possible to tie, 9-9. if that occurs, you then add up ALL the games (not sets...games make up a set) and whoever has the most games will win.

ok... so here we go. this match would determine if we were going to be undefeated league champs (we had already clinched the 'league champs' part... but we wanted the undefeated). maranatha's singles came out hard, but so did we. i won 2 and lost 1 (to that pro girl:) . i was done pretty fast, so i was heavily involved in the watching of the other sets and keeping score. our #1 doubles lost their first set (they had been undefeated up until that point), so that kind of caused a little bit of worry. as the match progressed, we found ourselves behind maranatha. our #3 singles player was down 1-5, and at this point, maranatha already had 8 sets, meaning that they only need two more sets to win the match, or one to make it a tie and go to games. we had 6 sets, so there were 4 sets left... 3 doubles and the singles match that we were down in. we had to win all of them to win the match.

our singles girl pulled it off and came back to win... it was incredible!! ok... so three left. two of the doubles sets went fast... we won them pretty easily. now, down to one set. the match score at this point was 9-8, with us having 9. in this last set, were down 1-3, then 2-4. at this point, everyone is watching and incredibly nervous. i don't think i have ever been put through such a nerve-wrecking match by just watching. we hadn't started counting games yet, but we figured that who ever won this set, would win the match... if we tied and went to games, we thought that maranatha would have more games.

it was then 4-5, and we counted games. the game count (not including the set happening right then) was 70-70... yup, the game score was tied, so whoever won the set would win the match (because they would have two more games than us if they won 6-4... making it 74-76).

there were some long rallies, and i think i held my breath throughout the majority of the match, not wanting to breath and disturb the path of the tennis ball in the midst of its rally. it was then 6-6 and went to a tie breaker.... A TIE BREAKER!!! the entire match has come down to a tie breaker! can it get any closer?!?!? my heart was going... it was so crazy, i can't find words to describe the feelings that everyone was going through.

well, you know the outcome.... we won the tie-breaker and won the match, 10-8. golly! it was so close! i don't think there was any better way to win the undefeated-champ title. go girl's tennis!