1st Tournament!

Well, not exactly.  But it's my first individual tournament...that counts.  The one I did years ago...Little Mo...well, we don't really count that.  :)  

This tournament was at St Mary's College in Moraga...close to my cousins, but still over an hour away from our house.   Too bad for us, my match started at 8am...so we had to leave the house on Saturday and Sunday at 620am!!!!  Just that alone was tough...but it was a good weekend.  

The format was Round Robin, so 4 singles players are grouped together and over the course of the first day, we all play each other.   I played over 4.5 hours total on Saturday...at the end of the day, my calves hurt, the bottom of my feet hurt, and my hands were cramping.  Whoa.

My first opponent (8am) was Ioann.  I think he's 12, but he was a pretty big kid.  He didn't talk much and wasn't very friendly.  He beat me, 2-6, 4-6.  It was tough, but I think I did pretty well.  Overall, I still was able to get 6 games.  He also beat the other two players later that day,  but by more games.  He was the winner of our flight.....

These are the facilities. It's pretty nice here, but it was FREEZING!  Super duper cold and Mom was wearing so many layers, but was still cold!  BRRRRRR!!!!

My 2nd round, I played a boy named Sachin.  He was taller than me, but I didn't feel like he was that much older than me....my guess was 12.  But actually....he was 14 and a freshman in high school!  That was a surprise.  He was really really nice and told me I was really good for my age.  We chatted during each of the breaks.   I lost, 2-6, 1-6.

Coach Nikita came to watch me play too.  He drove all that way on his day off!  It was nice though because instead of yelling at me (like he does sometimes during practices), we played card games during the breaks.  This was my 3rd round, against Evan (who was also my doubles partner for Sunday)  Evan turned out to be 17 (yes 17), but I actually guessed more like 14.  Anyhow, I didn't know how old he was until after.  I was able to beat him but it wasn't easy.  The final score was 6-0, 3-6, and tiebreaker 10-4.

On Sunday, we were supposed to play doubles, but Ioann, the winner of the singles....was a no show!  So we all got up super early and drove over an hour for...NOTHING!  Well, we won by default! Overall, it was a good weekend.  I was happy that I won a singles.