Women’s Tennis: Blogging with Julie Blackmore – Ohio State Buckeyes
10/24/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
Senior Julie Blackmore blogs about the women’s tennis team’s trip to the ITA Midwest Regional Championships.
Day One: The trip to East Lansing
Our team has been working hard for the last couple months and regionals is finally here! It’s the culmination of the individual fall season which gives every player an opportunity to make it to the National Indoor Tournament, a tournament in which only 32 players in the country make the singles draw and only 16 teams make the doubles draw.
We got on the road around 2:00 p.m. and made it into East Lansing, Mich., around 6:45. The ride was pretty quick and easy. The only drawback was that we couldn’t get a practice court until 8 p.m. since the qualifying rounds of regionals started today and matches were still on. We had a pretty good practice and then came back to the hotel to order dinner.
We start our day tomorrow around 12 p.m. with a warm up practice and then play our first rounds of doubles after that. The first round match times vary from 2 p.m.-5 p.m. and second round matches will follow. It’s going to be another long day, which is just a part of the fall tournament season.
Until tomorrow, GO BUCKS!
Day Two: At the Midwest Regional
Today was the first day of the main draw of the doubles. Overall, it was a good day for us. All four of our doubles teams won our first round matches and advanced to the round of 32. After that, two of our four teams, the team of Christina Keesey and Cami Hubbs and the team of Kirsten Flower and I won our second doubles matches, advancing to the round of 16. Both of the other teams had tough opponents (both of their opponents were seeded) but fought hard.
Once again, it has been long day. We didn’t leave the tennis courts until after 9 p.m. and tomorrow is going to be even longer with our practice courts at 7:10 a.m. So good night and GO BUCKS!
Day Three: At the Midwest Regional
Today started with the round of 16 of doubles followed by the main draw of singles. We started off on a good note. Both of our doubles teams that played won their matches. Kirsten and I came back from 4-7 down to beat the 5th seeded team from Notre Dame 9-7 and Christina and Cami pulled out a tough match against Michigan 9-8. So now both of our teams are in the quarterfinals of doubles.
After that, we all played our first round of singles. The singles draw consists of all the best players in the region, so every match is tough. We had a good start in singles with three out of our six players in the draw advancing into the round of 32. Continuing with our long day was the second round of singles. We all had tough matches but unfortunately none of us could pull them out. So after being at the tennis facility from 7 a.m. this morning until 10 p.m. tonight we finally returned to the hotel.
We have another early start tomorrow at 8 a.m. and look forward to coming out of our doubles matches victorious. If we are able to do so it will be very big wins for us. So until tomorrow, GO BUCKS!
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