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Published: October 13th 2010
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City Tennis Championship
You can see my name in the draw a little above the 8th seed. They spelled my name wrong of course: Rithards instead of Richards, haha typical Hola a todos,
The last week of September was "la semana del deporte" (sports week) in Santander. Various sports clubs and gyms worked with the city to organize a wide variety of free activities and I participated in several events. The Real Sociedad de Tenis de la Magdalena, a very elite tennis club in Santander with RED CLAY courts, was hosting an open city tennis championship. I entered the tournament so that I could play some tennis for free and experience playing on red clay courts for the first time! I was also curious to see what the level of play would be in the tournament and was thinking it would be great to perhaps have the chance to meet some players my level. The tournament started on Monday night and went all week through Saturday so you only had to play one match in a day. In my first two matches I played against a 20 year old girl and a 40 something woman that had some good shots but made a lot of errors and I won both matches easily 6-0, 6-0. My roommates Alissa and Mathilde came to my first and second matches and another friend Sydney
City Tennis Championship
snapping photos of the club while waiting to begin my first match in the tournament on Monday came to my third one so it was fun having some company at the club! I really wish I had gotten them to take a picture of me at the club or playing or something but I kept forgetting to until it was too late... but oh well. My third match was against a 13 year old girl that had excellent technique and hit the ball with quite a lot of power for her age. We had close games but I won most of them and by the second set she started to get really frustrated and just kind of fell apart so I ended up winning 6-0, 6-1. I was certainly glad that the 13 year old girl wasn't more consistent because I wouldn't have felt very good losing to a little girl!! By this point I had reached the semifinals held on Friday. I finally met my match against a 27 year old girl named Marta. She had good technique, kept her head in the match and didn't make very many errors. I just squeaked by in the first set, winning in a tiebreaker 7-6. The second set I started to play less consistently, making more errors and
City Tennis Championship
tables by the courts in the Real Sociedad de Tenis de la Magdalena Marta began to make less so although we had close games the score was lopsided and she won it 6-1. We played a supertiebreaker (to 10 points instead of 7) for the third set and unfortunately I lost it 10-6. It would have been great to make it to the finals of the tournament but I enjoyed the close match in the semis and Marta was really nice. It turns out that the finals was going to be no competition for Marta because she would be playing a 12 year old girl! Marta's mom had been playing on the other side of the draw and lost to the 12 year old, who was an ok player but not THAT good. So the way I like to see it, my semifinal match was the final pretty much.
After the match we exchanged phone numbers to get together again another time to play some more tennis. Later that evening I ran into her in the street near my house and I was talking to some of her friends too that also seem friendly so I told her that we would have to get together another weekend to go out. People in
Cantabria have the reputation of being unfriendly and not as open to strangers as people in other parts of Spain and many newcomers to Santander complain that it is hard to make friends. Fortunately, I have not experienced this and through sports like frisbee and tennis and through auxiliares who have been in Santander a year like my roommate Alissa, I've been able to make a lot of friends from Santander already.
During sports week in Santander, the tourism office was giving free tours of the city and I decided it would be a good event to let other auxiliares know about that had just arrived in Santander. We didn't start working until the first week of October so many auxiliares were arriving the last week of September. I already knew the city fairly well from walking around so much but I thought it would be interesting to hear some historical commentary about places in the city. So on Wednesday morning I arranged to meet some other auxiliares for the tour. My roommate Alissa came, a German auxiliar named Markus who I had already met a few times to do things with in the city, and several American and
City Tennis Championship
Santander's bay is in the distance British auxiliares that I had not yet met in person. It was fun to meet a lot of new people and it was a beautiful sunny day and actually quite hot. We walked all the way to the plaza where the casino is located by one of the beaches and then I walked back to the center with some of the auxiliares. Later after lunch I went to the beach for awhile to enjoy the weather and I swam in the water for the first time. I had only put my feet in a few times before. The water was pretty cold, especially first walking in but once you dunked yourself you started to get used to the temperature and it wasn't so bad. After the beach I headed straight to the Club de Magdalena for my tennis match and used the really nice locker room to take a shower...hehe.
On Saturday my ultimate frisbee team Fendisc played in a tournament in Santander on the same beach where we normally have our practice. Teams came from Madrid, Valladolid and Burgos in addition to Santander's other ultimate team Corocotta. Our team and Corocotta divided into 2 teams of more or
City Tennis Championship
later in the week before my match on Wednesday less even ability so that everyone would get more playing time. Playing ultimate on the beach here in Spain has been new for me because I only ever played in cleats on grass fields when I played at U.Va. On the beach, 5 people often play on a team at once instead of 7 and horizontal stacks are used more often than vertical ones. Running on the sand really tires you out more quickly than grass too. The tourney went all day from 10 am to about 6 pm and I had SO much fun playing competitively again. I was pretty exhausted by the end though and it didn't help that I had also been playing tennis matches all week in the championship and was already sore in my legs from my close semifinal match the day before. Every team played 4 games in the tournament and my team Fendisc B ended up winning our first game and losing the rest by fairly close margins. For our second game the way the pairing worked out we actually played the other half of our team, Fendisc A. I thought this was kind of lame considering how many other teams were there
walking tour of Santander
by the beach at the end of our tour: with 2 British auxiliares: Lorna and Emma; a German auxiliar: Markus; and 2 Americans and a Canadian: Steven, Nick and Evie and the fact that we scrimmage within our team during every practice but anyway.. We barely lost 7 to 9. Then we played our last 2 games against Corocotta A and B and lost both by close margins which was a bit frustrating but simply shows that we need to work on some things! It's unfortunate that my team and Corocotta don't have very good relations. In Spain we are in the rare situation that there are multiple ultimate teams in one city but we never meet to scrimmage or anything because pretty much Corocotta has always been the more experienced team and is pretty uptight about winning. I've gotten the impression from what my teammates have said that they are never interested in scrimmaging us because they're weird about competition. As a team they are overall older (have a lot more members in their 30s than in their 20s) and they are more serious so I think I definitely picked the right team to join in Santander! I prefer being on the more chill underdog team, hehe :-)
After our last game in the frisbee tourney I ran down to the water and jumped in for a swim
Ultimate Frisbee Tourney
beginning of the tourney on Saturday morning. Watching the other half of our team, Fendisk A play another team with a few of teammates. It felt so good after running around on the beach all day and the waves were great. There were a lot of surfers out. Later I got ice cream before returning home. SUCH a good day. All in all, it was blast of week and the tennis tournament came especially at a good time because I hadn't started giving private English classes in the evenings yet so my evenings were wide open and I could easily show up for every match... Hasta luego!
Besos,
Dana
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Tio Buck
non-member comment
too much!
You are having entirely too much fun! How will you ever come back to the US? Thanks again for all the fotos and account of your adventure. Saludos y un abrazo, Tio Buck