Khandallah Tennis and Squash Club

It’s been a year since I left Wellington on a tennis scholarship to Pepperdine University – and it feels like plenty has happened in that time. The University is in an amazing location, just a few hundred metres up the hill from Malibu beach, 30 minutes drive north of LA.  It feels like a pretty special place with 8000 students from 50 countries and from every state in the US. The University has a strong academic reputation and with less than 20 students in most lectures, there’s no hope of slacking off in class! I’m enrolled in a 4 year Business degree.

I started school in the fall in early September and training got underway almost straight away. The weather was pretty hot compared to what I was used to back in windy Wellington so daily training for 3 and a half hours in 35 degrees proved to be very tough for my body for the first couple of weeks. During the fall semester we didn’t actually play any other ‘college matches’, we just played individual tournaments and it was mainly used as a ‘training block’ for the spring season when the dual matches (inter-college) get underway.  After a while I started to play much better and finished the fall season off with a quarter final berth at the UCLA tennis individual.  Unfortunately I lost to one of the top players at UCLA.  I came back home mid December for a well deserved 3 week break before going back in early January for the ‘real’ season.

Our very first dual match came round soon enough and funnily it was against Cal Poly (Robert Foy’s school).  What made this experience even funnier was the fact I had to play Rob in my match.  Of all the schools and all players from around the world  that I could have played in my very first college match, I ended up playing a player whom I had looked up to all my life and who lived 10 minutes away in Khandallah!

The season flew by quite quickly and our team had some up and down results.  We played most of our matches at Pepperdine, but also travelled to Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, Florida, Texas and around California.  We beat #11 Illinois which was a high point, won the West Coast Conference title in San Diego and got to the NCAA Tournament but didn’t end up making the sweet 16 (the top 16 teams in the country), losing the round of 32 away to Stanford.  On a personal level, my fitness and strength has taken a major leap forward after the rigorous daily training sessions; I moved up to #3 in singles and # 2 doubles in my team.  I also won a couple of WCC ‘doubles team of the month’ awards with different partners. I learned that college tennis is incredibly competitive, and you can never guarantee your place in the team. You have to work really hard both on and off the court and basically not take anything for granted.

It was a great freshman year and I am looking forward to building on what I’ve learned when I head back in a little over a month from now to start the tough fall season again. I’m aiming to have a great season with ‘the Waves’.