{"id":39745,"date":"2009-11-25T01:12:12","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T01:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=39745"},"modified":"2015-01-19T18:50:23","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T18:50:23","slug":"how-i-become-a-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=39745","title":{"rendered":"How I become a captain"},"content":{"rendered":"

the teams<\/a><\/p>\n

After seeing the\u00a0my fellow 3.5\u00a0boys<\/a>\u00a0had gone to the National\u00a0in 2009 and myself won\u00a0an impossible\u00a0match<\/a>\u00a0that boast my confident considerably,<\/del> I decided to join an USTA team myself.<\/p>\n

I quietly (yes .. I did worry if I was good enough to make a team .. so told no one) sent an email to the Long Island coordinator and when she had enough players she formed a team<\/a>. Our team captain is a veteran who works at a tennis\u00a0club, which would be our home base.<\/p>\n

One day Simon asked me\u00a0what do I do this winter. I told him that I joined a team.<\/p>\n

“Sign me up.” He said, without asking where what, who\u00a0and when.<\/p>\n

Surely partner. Our team was looking for players. Actually every team is perpetually looking for good players.<\/p>\n

A few days later, another friend heard from Simon and asked to join with her husband.<\/p>\n

Yes ma’am, why not.\u00a0I was about to run to shout\u00a0to my captain.<\/p>\n

Then they asked who else were on the team.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know anyone.” I said.<\/p>\n

They were surprised. “You don’t know anyone?\u00a0Why did you join??”<\/p>\n

Cause I wanted to play ..<\/p>\n

Then the voice grew louder:\u00a0why don’t we form a team?<\/p>\n

OMG, that’s a\u00a0GREAT idea. Count me PLEASEY.<\/p>\n

The timing was great. The playing circle I was in, was mostly\u00a0boys.\u00a0After nearly a decade playing, or better yet, trained by them, I grew more confident and could hit the ball over the net.<\/p>\n

Who’s captain I asked.<\/p>\n

Oh no, everyone was looking at me.<\/p>\n

You’re kidding right?<\/p>\n

They said they were\u00a0NOT.<\/p>\n

When electing the leader,\u00a0we Chinese\u00a0would threw in the worst candidate first,\u00a0like a court jester to warm up the crowds, to entertain and to shame the better qualified man or woman to step forward. The position would go round two, more nominations and polite refusals, sometimes even round three. Irene being a simpleton, and against my best judgment, I accepted.\u00a0Eagerly nodded her head the first time. It must have surprised them as much as myself.<\/p>\n

At the\u00a0recruiting time, Ping the well respected champion\u00a0whom\u00a0I thought would be the captain,\u00a0word to word fed me the following line:<\/p>\n

“Irene, please do not say I want him to join ..\u00a0 just tell him that I already signed up.”<\/p>\n

It worked like magic. We’ve a full and strong squad in no time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the teams After seeing the\u00a0my fellow 3.5\u00a0boys\u00a0had gone to the National\u00a0in 2009 and myself won\u00a0an impossible\u00a0match\u00a0that boast my confident considerably, I decided to join an USTA team myself. I quietly (yes .. I did worry if I was good enough to make a team .. so told no one) sent an email to the Long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}