April 6, 2007

In the sixth edition of the Illini Big Ten journal, senior Emily Wang talks about the Big Ten season.

We are now in the middle of our Big Ten season. This is when the season gets harder and we have to keep pushing. I felt pretty good about winning my first Big Ten singles match in a while against Michigan State. By the end of the match, I was dead tired. It's been a long time since I have played a long three setter.

I wasn't sure how everyone else had ended up doing, but I was praying that my match was the deciding match and I was determined to win. It felt good to have won, but it wasn't as fun because the team didn't win. It's always better when the team wins!

This past weekend we went to Northwestern and Wisconsin. Dave drove the huge nine passenger van and Michelle drove her little red Jeep. We caught a lot of traffic getting into Chicago, and when we got to Evanston, we got lost looking for the tennis courts. We stopped to ask a few people for directions and we finally reached our destination.

After practice, we went to dinner and our hotel. Megan's Internet was not working and she was getting really frustrated. On trips, the Internet is everything to us!

We had a tough, quick match against Northwestern. Megan, Shivani, and Kristina played fairly close against their opponents, but the efforts were not enough. Our van ride to Wisconsin was not depressing; everyone was still in good spirits after our loss and looking forward to winning on Sunday. By the time we got to our hotel, it had started raining in Wisconsin. We were going to go to Friday's for dinner, but the wait was 45 minutes. When we got back into the van to go to another restaurant, we discovered that Leigh kept the beeper that they gave us to tell us that our table was ready. Dave had to take it back after dinner. We ended up eating at Red Robin.

The service was quick and Mom, the nickname that we have given Michelle, let us get appetizers. We were also allowed to get strawberry lemonade, and it was the best we had ever had. Later that night when we were all hanging out in the hotel, the tornado sirens started going off. I was running around our room, and Kristina just sat there and laughed at me. Everyone expects me to be used to tornadoes and to not be afraid, but I am very afraid. I tried to explain how unpredictable and dangerous tornados can be, but they all think I'm nuts. I went down to the lobby and right after I got there the sirens went off.

After all the excitement from the night before, we headed the next morning to the tennis courts for our match against Wisconsin. Although we lost the doubles point, we still pulled out the match against Wisconsin. I was personally a little upset because I ended up losing my match in three sets. But we won the match, so it didn't matter.

Overall, the trip was a good time and ended on a good note with the win.

Until next time fans,
Emily Wang