Breana Lai

Past Entries

Entry 1

October 17, 2004

The Emory women's tennis team dominates again on another fantastic trip! We headed up to Lexington, Va., (October 8-10) to play in the Washington & Lee Fall Festival Tournament.

With Gregory (or was his name Doug?) driving the massive charter bus, we left Emory excited and ready for a great weekend of tennis. After numerous movies (I cannot even look at McDonald's food anymore), a run across the highway for Subway, Dairy Queen blasts, and 10 hours, we arrived in Virginia.

Also arriving that night was our other senior Lindsay, who is currently studying in D.C for the semester. Lindsay helped immensely by providing food and support during the matches. Although the freshmen only got to spend a short time with Lindsay, we all can not wait to have her back in the spring along with the rest of the team that is currently abroad.

Saturday morning we were chilled to the bone for warmups, but the team still managed to get some good cheering together by screaming out each other's names. We all played two singles and two doubles matches on Saturday. Everyone did very well and in particular, Sam, Jaime, Carina, Christine, and Linda won all four of their matches. After a long day of tennis, we all enjoyed a relaxed Italian buffet at the hotel and turned in early.

On Sunday we completed our final matches, playing one singles and one doubles match. Everyone played very well and was successful, especially Jamie, who pulled out a great comeback after being down 8-5 in the third-set 10-point tiebreaker. She won five straight points in a row. Talk about mental toughness!

The ride back to Emory was entertaining, with the team playing guessing games all together. (By the way, Steve's last name is Lewis and Orville Redenbacher is the guy who makes popcorn). We took a slightly shorter and more direct route this time and we got back in eight hours instead of 10.

Thanks again to Christine's family for coming and watching us play and cooking us some yummy cookies and bread. Also, as always, it was great to see my parents!

This tournament concluded our fall season (how sad!) but we will be training hard in the off-season to make sure that we are ready to kick butt in the spring!

Breana Lai is a sophomore from Chapel Hill, N.C. She would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.