The Role of a Tennis Team Senior

How does it feel to be a senior on the team?

I get more air time and the older guys don’t talk over me, which is good, because I often have something funny to contribute. I’m not an official leader because Mike (Mattelson) is our “Tim Tebow” minus the concussion, but I do feel a responsibility to take care of the freshmen.
We have five of them. They add some diversity to the metaphorical salad or melting pot because before them, the team was mainly a New York stew. Our freshmen hail from Tanzania, Texas, Florida, Rochester (Not tri-State mind you), and the last is a French and Japanese tri-cultural Northern Californian.

I have two people on the team to speak French with now. French is one of Euma’s three languages and one of Kartik’s four. Kartik has already taught some greetings, rather insults, in Hindi and Kiswahili. It feels like I play for the UN.

We even have actual brothers on the team. This year, junior Josh Jasso was reunited with his younger brother Nick Jasso. I’m excited for the freshmen to get more comfortable, crack their shells, lower their guard, and open up. I barely spoke as a freshman, well, maybe only the first week. I think our blend of characters has begun to coalesce beautifully. For grinding out the wait and following my blog, well, let’s call it our blog, here’s the final nicknames.

Jeremy: “Arthur” because that’s his last name and also the name of a children’s book character. We also use “J.R.” not as in Smith but because his middle name starts with R.

Euma: A great name like that doesn’t need a nickname but we came up with “310” in reference to the movie and “Puma” because he’s fast and aggressive, a beast.

Max Willner: Another guy who doesn’t need a nickname. I sometime use Snoop’s izz-inflection to say “Mizz-ax.”

Greg: “Franklin” because of his resemblance to the children’s book character or “G-Reg” with “G” pronounced like the letter because it sounds cool.

Shane: I’ve had plenty of nicknames even though I have a great name. Here, I go by “Slash” or “/” because like Kordell Stewart, I can play quarterback and wide-receiver. Ironically, I am mainly a singles player. Some, mainly J.R. refer to me as “Dirty” or “Dirty Dirty” because I talk trash and play physical in basketball and football, tip toeing the line of legality. I do have good hygiene though.

Josh Jasso: He reminds me of a character named “Rig” from a TV show but he didn’t like that so I started calling him “Smash” because it fits his game and rhymes with “Slash.” We call him “Yosh” occasionally but he hasn’t embraced any of his nicknames thus far.

My next ponderings will be about the ITA Tournament taking place this Friday-Sunday.