"Olympic Experience" (Part III)

When I woke up the next morning, my back hurt so much from the extra firm mattress that I could not stand up straight. But emotionally, I was healthy. I had thankfully recovered from the loss; and my doubles partner and I played well to win our match. Our team had gone undefeated in five matches. We now came to the final round to play another undefeated team for the championship.

With the brutal sun hanging over the courts, all five matches in the final round went underway at the same time. I played with another teammate in our match. We won the first set nicely. In the second set, we got broken twice and fell behind, but we came back each time. We worked as a team, cheering each other on and developing strategies to get ourselves in winning position. By the time we broke back for the second time, all the other matches were finished. It was only us on the court, and the rest of both teams were looking on.

My partner and I did not know this at the time, but as our captains told us after our match, our teams had split the first four matches, so the championship came down to this match.

At 4-all, it was my turn to serve. We got ahead but the game went to deuce. In the end, we held and moved ahead. Five-four. If we won the next game, we would win the match. We moved ahead to 40-0 quickly and had three match points. We lost the next point to a strong volley from our opponents. Big cheers from their teammates.

Match point number two. It was my turn to receive serve. I told myself before my opponent's serve that I wanted to hit a solid return and put our team in a good position for a good rally. I was ready for the serve and was very calm.

To be continued