Worth the Drive

 Tonight the Bethany tennis team made the long hike to the east side of Fort Wayne to play Blackhawk Christian.  The majority of the players rode the bus, but I took Cameron as a COVID precaution.  I enjoy taking him to these matches as it gives us a lot of time to talk about his day.  He wasn't a big fan of school yesterday, but today went better and he had interesting news to share with me that will affect some of his classmates.  

We were the first ones to arrive at Kreager Park and I was happy to see that they had an actual bathroom for us to use.  Doug and the bus arrived shortly after we did and the players were soon on the court for their warm up.  Cameron played JV singles #1.  Since Blackhawk only had nine players, he had to wait for the #1 JV doubles to finish before he could play.  Doug and I spent the time reading and watching several of the matches on the court.  Cameron hung out with Ethan and watched his teammates play.  

By 6:30 Cameron was on the court ready for his match.  We knew that he was a stronger player than his opponent from watching the doubles match.  We were pleased that Cameron realized this as well and used his time on the court to work on some areas that he had hoped to improve.  We were impressed with the strength of his passing shots.  He had spent a lot of time on those this season and had improved greatly.  Cameron also worked on putting the point away instead of rallying with his opponent.  It worked well and he had some great winners during the match.  By the time Matt came over to talk to him Cameron was up 7-0 and serving for the set.  His opponent stepped up his game during the first two points of the eighth game and quickly took the lead.  Cam rallied, but ended up losing that game.  Thankfully, he held strong winning the match 8-2 giving the junior varsity a 3-0 win on the evening.  Varsity was victorious as well with a 3-2 score.  As I watched the boys sing their victory song on the bus before we headed out I couldn't help but smile.  In August we weren't even sure that they would be able to have a season.  Cameron had now played in 8 matches and had a winning record at both varsity #3 singles and JV #1 singles.  Hopefully, COVID and the weather cooperates so that the Bruins can finish the season completely.