tennis season wrap-up (part 2…doubles at state)

Oh man I love these girls.

They’ve been playing together since Elle was a sophomore and Emma was a Freshman and have just kept going strong.  Here in the desert everyone on the team plays doubles as well as singles.  I’m so glad because I don’t know that Elle would have chosen doubles if given the choice in the beginning.

But over the years she has grown to adore it.  Probably mostly because these two just have so much fun together:

These girls aren’t heading to Wimbledon or anything, (who knows, maybe they could if they really put their minds to it), but they have just been so fun to watch.  Elle with her long limbs has become so great at the net and Emma is just everywhere with some power shots.

So they got to go to state as a doubles team.

The first day they sure had a great cheering section:

A bunch of Dave’s family came to cheer them on.

The first match they were really playing to get into the tournament.

It was single-elimination and they put on a pretty good show and beat their first opponents 6-1, 6-0.

Then on to the next match, they beat the next ones 6-0, 6-0.

We wrapped it up for the day and celebrated the wins with these great people.

The next day the matches were at a tennis center quite a ways out.

We brought the whole family to cheer on their big sis.

These girls were ready to go!

Their first match was against some pretty tough opponents.

They didn’t let their totally matching outfits and visors, matching bags, and a big pop-up tent for their school get to them 🙂 and played their hearts out.

Claire decided she needed to get in on a little of the coaching advice:)

Elle and Emma came out on top after some pretty awesome rallys and took the match 6-4, 6-2.  From there it was on to the quarter finals.

At about that point you could see the worry in Elle’s eyes.

She was going to prom at a different school that night and her date was planning to pick her up at 4:00.  It was about noon at that point.

Yep, that’s how competitive this girl is.  Ha!  Sure, they both wanted to win.  But at some point they knew they were going to be up against “the twins.”  There are these twins who are so incredibly good.  They took state last year (as freshman!) and beat Elle and Emma single handedly in a tournament  during the season.  I don’t think anyone has hardly won a game from them let alone won a match.

So I was cracking up then Elle realized their next opponents were those twins themselves.  Her eyes lit up and she and Emma had big smiles.

They had fun with that one, hit hard, worked hard, but got creamed by these cute girls:

But not the end of some great friendships (we adore that Emma…and Coach too!)…or of tennis for that matter.

At least I hope it’s not the end of tennis!