Tennis Tournament

Hwachong tennis team has never had any trophies since it began 20 years ago. But this year, my tennis team and i made history and managed to get 4th place in the national inter-school tournament. I was vice-captain of the team and playing doubles most of the way with our captain, we managed to get this magnificent result. We had gotten a new coach this year that just happened to be my private coach. We knew that we had a chance to get a trophy, so the whole team worked very hard to try and get the top 4 position. In the group stages, we had Powerhouses RI, Catholic High and SJI in our groups. RI had been runners-up for the past 2 years and catholic High had been 3rd place in the last 2 years. SJI had beaten us 5-0 last year as well. We were anxious but were excited to play as well. Knowing RI would be out of our reach, we aimed to get 2nd place. Our first match was against St Patrick's where we beat them 5-0. This really boosted our moral and we went in less nervous to play SJI. We took the first 2 matches with the second being a hard fought battle where we won 9-8. It was my turn to play doubles with my partner. We knew that we were vunerable as the last 2 matches would probably be lost so my doubles partner and i went into the courts with pressure building up. It turned out relieving in the end as we easily won a 9-0 victory over our opponents and celebrated our win which had brought us one step closer to getting in the top 4. Against RI, we lost 4-1 fairly quickly with my doubles grabbing the only win with a 9-8 victory. We knew that we would lose but we suffered a blow, one of our players had sprained his ankle. We were very anxious as the deciding match against Catholic High was the following day. To our relief, the next day he came ready to play. Shockingly, something surprising happened. It rained continuously for the next 4 days and we had to postpone the match. On the 5th day, we managed to play 3 matches, where we took a 2-1 lead, with my doubles win 9-1 and a singles win 9-7. We needed one more win the next day to ensure victory.

The match had been postponed to Saturday and we came back on the weekend to participate. About 20 parents of the Catholic High team arrived with none of ours. We were pressured by the audience but in the end we pulled through winning both the singles 9-4 and the doubles 9-7. We had a 4-1 win over Catholic high and made it to our first semi-final!!