Bittersweet in “General”

We’re baccckkkk!!!! And A LOT has changed!
The tennis team is off to a stupendous start. Catherine Reed, the only senior on the team this year, has been rallying the troops together to practice everyday over the past week and a half. Practice involves the typical 15-minute warm-up, pouring water on ourselves in the blazing heat, groundstroke drills, Laura Simmons performing a dance routine to the ‘Peacock’ song by Katy Perry (Kei$ha is so four months ago) catching all the bridge walkers by surprise because who knew tennis players could bust such wild dance moves, a few points, and then we end practice with a two court sprint. So everyone watch out because not only are we going to be stronger and faster, but we have a secret weapon (hint: her initials are L.S.) whose distracting dance moves will throw anyone off their game. Oh and we are bigger this year! We have four awesome freshmen coming in. All of our fans out there will be meeting them soon in the coming weeks after we get to know them.
Now, here is the sad news. Elliott Datlow, the best assistant tennis coach and Meer cat impersonator ever to live, is moving to D.C. Elliott, it has been an AWESOME two years. We all will miss you so very much, especially your calming presence on the court, wise words, hopeless arguments, and “great” musical taste. The tennis team met for dinner last Tuesday at Salerno’s, the go-to pizza place for tennis team dinners, to say farewell to Elliott and hear a goodbye speech of course. Everyone was able to come except for the freshmen and Jen here who woke up that day unable to open her eyes! Despite her lack of eyesight, she went to lunch and some stores in town. She had to walk down the street clinging on to what was hopefully the friend she was with. When feeling up every piece of clothing in the store, she came upon this one piece of clothing that she had a paranormal connection with so she bought it, trusting that her friends wouldn’t lie to her about the true price of the shirt. Fortunately, she has great friends and she went out the next night looking great in her new, hot pink and totally Jen shirt. If she was shopping with me, I would have convinced her to buy a fashionable dress from Pumpkinseeds, but what really was leopard overalls from Goodwill. After her long day of walking around town blind, she was worn out and in too much pain to make it to dinner.
So back to the romantic dinner with Elliott. The team gave Elliott a picture frame that we signed with a picture from all of the team last year and a sweet Hallmark card. The best gift he received was from Thing 1, a.k.a Laura Simmons. This was a CD Laura burned and as Laura Patillo would say, “it’s the music from her secret life at European raves”. But Laura stated boldly that he had to play this special CD at his first housewarming party because it was the ONLY way to get a party started. As she was telling Elliott this, Thing 2, Sallie Griffin, shook her head fiercely in the background. Sallie dearly noted that when Elliott jams to this CD on his way home to D.C., he must roll all his windows up and play at a level of volume that is not audible to anyone outside of the car. It would be quite unfortunate if Elliott corrupted cute ole’ Lexington with the Peacock song. The rest of the dinner involved sharing great stories and harking upon how much we missed Caire and Blair. SHOUT OUT. We miss you guys! Ya’ll were the best captains ever. Jen and I are so honored to be the chosen ones to continue the blog even though we know that we can never reach your level of success and eloquence. (Note: Caire and Blair reached over 3,000 blog views! Please give them a round of applause if you are reading this) At the end of the dinner, Elliott gave a nice, long ‘adios’ speech. I am pretty sure I saw some tears form. Elliott told us how hard his decision was to leave W&L and he begged us to keep in touch. Also, he promised to come to as many of our matches as possible this year! Finally, he approved of the new assistant coach coming in to replace him. Bianca Svensson is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama. Yes, she played Division I SEC tennis! She has the resume, but does she have the style and, more importantly, the dance moves. I am feeling an assistant coach of the week blog coming up next. The team is very excited to start working with Bianca. It is going to be a great year!

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