Deuce!

Went to a high school tennis....skirmish?....for the first time ever today.  Several of Daughter One's classmates compete on the tennis....collection?....so since it was a nice afternoon Daughter Three and I wandered up to the courts, met Daughter One, and watched for a short while until Daughter Two finished her track practice.  I came away with some thoughts:

** Tennis scoring is weird.  I knew this already from my days of watching Steffi Graf tear it up at Wimbledon.  My Steffi reference should make it pretty clear just how long it's been since I've watched any level of tennis so I was a little rusty today on how the scoring worked.  Then I tried explaining it to Daughter Two.  We both ended up with a headache.  If I understand the scoring correctly, scoring a point requires scoring four fake points before your opponent does, unless you both tie at three fake points, at which point you have to score two fake points in a row to win the real point.  And then you start over since a player needs six real points to win a portion of the skirmish.

** Tennis language is weird.  Players are always shouting about love and deuces.  It's like romance meets excretion.  Disturbing, really.

** Tennis is hard.  I've played tennis maybe twice in my life.  I think I hit the ball 'in' a total of once in those two outings.  Watching real players in person gave me a deeper appreciation of just how hard the game is.  Players never stop moving because the ball never stops moving yet the players hit that moving ball while on the move and consistently put it in the court.  All while shouting about love and deuces, mind you.

** Tennis players are honorable folks.  There are no officials for these high school tennis skirmishes, so players make their own calls on ins and outs and scores.  And they apparently believe each other.  And if they don't act honorably a coach will come storming across the court and award a free fake point to the opposing team because of his team's behavior.  It's all very impressive.  And really, really bizarre.

** The individual sports (tennis, track, swimming, etc.) of high school athletics are awesome.  The boys.....ahem, I mean young men I was watching play doubles were former basketball players of mine, one a former student, both really good friends of my daughter.  Really good humans.  Their parents sat in front of where I stood.  My daughters were there.  Several players' classmates were there.  All of us supporting these guys, and their teammates, with positive cheers and support.  Nobody was complaining about the officiating (see above) or the coaching.  There was no griping about mistakes or poor play.  Just encouragement, clapping, a couple of cheers, some laughter.  Very relaxed and fun.

** Kids grow up way too fast.  The group of high school juniors I was watching and surrounded by are a month away from becoming high school seniors.  For twenty years I've taught classes of kids and watched them grow up, but no group has been watched as closely as the class of 2019, my eldest offspring's class.  One of the guys playing in front of me tonight was a student of mine for both first and second grade; was it really ten years ago that he sat sobbing on my classroom floor on our last day of school together?  And now he's taller than me and dashing around a tennis court clobbering balls all over the place!  Well, not literally all over.  Usually.  The kids standing around me used to get rides from parents to my daughter's birthday parties and sleepovers - now they are all driving themselves to school, games, work.  Their aging hasn't gone unseen - I have many special memories of concerts and games and speeches and gatherings they took part in - but despite watching them mature for years it still now seems so sudden that they stand on the edge of adulthood.

I know for a lot of kids high school isn't a highlight, a great time.  But it was for me, and I know it is for my eldest daughter, and I could sense that it is for the kids who gathered at the school tennis courts tonight.  I'm glad I walked up there, took the time to see some kids in a new light before their time in the school and community has passed.  I hope they hold on to a day like this one and store it away as memory for when times aren't so carefree.  A memory of sunshine, friendship, competition, and laughter......and yes, love.  The tennis kind.