These two spent the tennis season together this year:
Grace with her steady, beautiful strokes on the varsity team, and Claire on JV trying to balance between tennis matches and volleyball practices.  
They both wore holes through their tennis shoes and learned the value of team work, and how mental tennis can be. (I had to smile at Claire’s arm-winging mad-at-herself-for-a-particular-shot antics on the court sometimes when she was behind…she sure kept me entertained 😉

It was a grand year for me and Dave to watch from the sidelines, those two girls battling it out on the court, and learning so much.
We spent so much time walking through courts like this:

Ping-ponging from Claire to Grace, Grace to Claire, doubles to singles, and singles to doubles once again.

(They both got to play both, that’s what we do here in the desert and I’m so glad!)

Best cheerleader award goes to Dave:

One of Grace’s doubles partners:

One of Claire’s doubles partners:

We had different people join us on the sidelines…fun to have Dave’s parents here:

…and Julie’s family came to watch while they were in town:

Elle joined them for a practice…so fun since she shared this same coach back in her high school days:

My parents joined us for the very last game of the season too:

(more about that weekend over HERE)

Another doubles partner:

The days and matches marched by.  Some wins.  Some sad losses.  Some amazing rallies, lots of driving and surprisingly not much melting in the sun this year (it’s been a cooler spring and I’m so so grateful!)

And then, it was time to wrap it all up. 

I was in charge of coordinating things for Senior Night…specifically the pictures. 

 My favorite senior:

Before senior night I had to go into full-on scrapbooking mode to put together these books:

Phew!  I forgot how much time that takes!!

Luckily I had these JV girls to help on that last day:

I am not the best team mom when it comes to cute little momentos to give the girls at the end of the season, but with the help of all the other moms we put together these little baskets for all the girls:

…which they were happy as could be about.

It just so happened that senior night happened to fall on the hottest and windiest night of the season…making us unable to hang these enlarged pictures of each girl on the fences that last night.  Luckily we had gobs of willing (and cute!) picture holders 🙂

The awesome coach handed out awards:

 And we ate and celebrated all these good girls.

 Each heading off to spread their wings in different ways next year.

 It just seems so surreal that all of that tennis is over for this girl.

They had their little coach-and-girl-banquet and got these awards:

 Grace getting to “letter” in tennis this year:

WooHoo!
And with that, we bid goodbye to seeing these girls build each other up out there on those courts all over the valley.

 How I will miss that!!

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