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Jeff Michaels thought he was going to get to the ball—except that he had miscalculated how hard it had been hit. He lunged for it, racquet extended as far as possible, and then watched helplessly as it whizzed past him and bounced off the back wall of the court.
“Nice shot,” he said for what felt like the thousandth time that morning. Andi Carillo just smiled, walked to the baseline, and got into her service-returning stance.
Jeff picked up the ball she had just blasted past him and a second one that was lying behind the court and walked to the baseline to serve.
“Thirty–forty,” he said. His parents had taught him it was always the server’s job to call out the score so there would be no confusion about it.
There was little confusion about how badly Andi was beating Jeff. It was a clear, cool late March day in Philadelphia, and they were playing on a public court not far from Jeff’s house. It had been Andi’s idea to get out and play before tryouts for the Merion Middle School tennis team began on Monday. When she’d thrown in the fact that they could go to their favorite pizza place for lunch afterward—courtesy of a ride from her father—he’d jumped at the idea.
Now he wished he’d called in sick.
It was no surprise that Andi was a good tennis player. They had talked throughout the winter about how much they enjoyed playing, and Jeff already knew from soccer and basketball seasons that Andi was a very good athlete.
But this good he hadn’t been ready for. He could tell, even when they were warming up, that Andi had that feel for the game that only excellent players have. Jeff thought he was pretty good for someone who wouldn’t be twelve until the summer, and he’d done well in some age-group tournaments the previous couple of years. But Andi was very clearly on a different level.
It wasn’t about power. When Jeff had lost in tournaments, it was usually to kids who were bigger and stronger than he was and overpowered him. Jeff had grown during the school year and was now five foot six and 140 pounds and in shape, having played both soccer and basketball.
Andi was still a little taller than he was and weighed a good deal less. But she was almost blindingly fast, and her two-handed backhand rocketed off her racquet with as much speed as her whipsaw forehand. Jeff was a pretty good tennis player. Andi, he reasoned, was more of a prodigy.
“Set point, right?” she called back after his announcement of the score.
Jeff had almost forgotten. The two sets they’d played had gone so fast it was, in fact, already set point. She’d won the first set 6–1, and it was now 3–5 with Jeff serving in the second. Jeff had played better in the second set after adapting to the fact that just about anything he hit was coming back, even when he thought he’d hit a winner. The closest thing Andi had to an Achilles’ heel was her serve. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t have the power of her forehand or her backhand. This wasn’t uncommon in kids their age. Jeff’s serve didn’t exactly remind anyone of Roger Federer.
“Yeah, set point,” he said, almost relieved the match was almost over. They had agreed to play best-of-three. There would be no need, he thought, to play three.
His first serve, which he attempted to crush, sailed way long. He saw Andi creeping inside the baseline waiting to blast his weak second serve. He tried to spin it to her backhand—and succeeded. But it didn’t matter. She took one step to her left, lined up the looping ball, and slammed it into the corner, the ball landing inches inside the baseline and the sideline. Jeff didn’t bother to move.
“Nice,” he said for what felt like the millionth time of the morning.
She smiled, pulled her cap off, and let her long brown hair down from the bun she’d stuffed up into her cap in order to play.
They met at the net and formally shook hands like real tennis players.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’re so good?” he said as they walked off the court, picked up water bottles, and sat down, side-by-side.
“How good I am never came up, did it?” she said with a smile. “We just agreed it would be good to get out and play before the tryouts started, right?”
She was—as usual—right.
The middle school district in which Merion was located had announced two weeks earlier that, going forward, tennis teams would be co-ed. Andi was, at the very least, partly responsible for this.
When Merion had formed a sixth grade soccer team the previous fall, she wanted to be part of it even though the team was supposed to be for boys, since the girls had a field hockey team. Even though the soccer coach had done everything possible to keep her off the team and then—having been forced to allow her onto the team by the school principal—had kept her nailed to the bench, she had ended up starring for the Mustangs.
With tennis a new sport at the middle school level that spring, the decision had been made to make the teams co-ed. There would be three girls’ singles matches and three boys’ singles matches when teams played one another. There would also be one boys’ doubles match, one girls’ doubles match and, if the teams were tied at 4–4, a mixed doubles match would decide the outcome.
Players could only play a second match if the mixed doubles were needed to break a tie. Jeff was certain that Andi would be Merion’s number one singles player on the girls’ side and would play mixed doubles whenever it had to be played.
He was a lot less certain about how he’d fit in or if he’d fit in. Unlike in soccer and basketball, this was not just a sixth grade team. He’d be competing with seventh and eighth graders. Andi would, too, but he was confident she could handle the older kids. He wasn’t nearly as confident about how he would do when the tryouts began.
He took a long sip of water and asked Andi if she was ranked in the East. He knew tennis had rankings starting with ten-and-unders both regionally and nationally.
She gave him a funny look and then said, “Well, yeah, I was ranked third in the East last year.”
Jeff almost gasped, but held it in. One thing he knew about age-group tennis was that most players didn’t get into the top ten or maybe even the top twenty until they were at the top of the age group—especially the younger ones where kids were still growing.
Andi wouldn’t be twelve until May. That meant as an eleven-year-old the previous summer—a newly turned eleven-year-old—she’d only had two players ranked ahead of her in the eastern zone of the country.
“I’m guessing there weren’t a lot of eleven-year-olds in the top ten,” he said.
She sipped her water as if she hadn’t heard him and stood up to head off the court.
“Let me guess,” he said, standing to follow her out. “You were the only one.”
“True,” she said finally.
“What about nationally?” he asked.
“I was tenth,” she answered.
“Any other eleven-year-olds in the top ten?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Let’s go get some pizza.”
Copyright © 2022 John Feinstein
