Keahooi Hung and David Zhong play a match against Jared Devra during tennis practice.
Boys’ Tennis Hustles Into Their Season
March 17, 2015
Where do ghosts play tennis? On a tennis corpse!
While we may not all have the opportunity to see a ghost play tennis, we are fortunate to have a boys’ spring tennis team at Lincoln.
The boys’ spring tennis team began practices in early February and had their first match on Tuesday, Mar. 10 against Del Mar High School.Their second competition was on Thursday, Mar. 12 against San Jose High School. The score for both games was three matches won by Lincoln and four won by the opponent.
The coach this season is Coach Tariq Abdul-Wahad, more commonly known as simply Coach Tariq. Coach Tariq was also the coach for the girls’ tennis team in the fall, and boys’ Varsity basketball during the winter. Coach Tariq told Lion Tales that he hopes to win more matches this year. Last year, the boys’ tennis team won three matches, so their goal this year is to win six. He said he just wants to “make sure the players keep improving.”
Not many people know how tennis works. It is more complicated than simply hitting a green ball with a racket. Jared Devra, a senior tennis player, joined the tennis team his sophomore year of high school. He explained to Lion Tales how tennis is organized.
During practice, Jared Devra shows us his forehand position and David Zhong is attentive to his match.
According to Jared and a couple others tennis players, each team member is given a rank number. The top four players play in the singles category, and the players ranked 5 through 10 play doubles. Similar to badminton, tennis has a “ladder” ranking system where players constantly challenge each other for a higher rank on the team.
A typical tennis competition has seven matches. A match is divided into sets. Each set contains six games, and there may be a maximum of three sets per match. To win a match, one must win two sets. In the first competition against Del Mar, Del Mar won by one match. According to coach Tariq, that loss was due to nerves.
“We’ve grown a lot since last year,” said Jared. “I believe this team has a lot of potential; we just have yet to unlock it. We’ve grown a lot since last year.”
The next match will be on Tuesday, Mar. 17 at Lincoln, against Overfelt.
Below is the schedule for all boys’ tennis matches in the month of March.
Away games:
Tuesday, 3/10: Lincoln vs. Del Mar @ Del Mar
Thursday, 3/12: Lincoln vs. San Jose @ San Jose
Home games:
Tuesday, 3/17: Overfelt @Lincoln
Thursday, 3/19: Mt. Pleasant @Lincoln
Monday, 3/23: Oak Grove @Lincoln
Wednesday, 3/25: Delmar @Lincoln
Nick Zandbergen • Mar 24, 2015 at 10:07 am
That’s a forehand position, not serving. You can tell both because of his stance and the fact hes not behind the service line.