Tennis update!

I just finished playing a 6 week ARTL league. This is different than playing the spring or fall USTA league. In season, I play on a team of about 12. Once a week, our team has several matches going on at once against another team. Each season lasts about 6 weeks. The ARTL league is an off season league you can play for fun, but doesn't affect your USTA rating and you don't play with a whole team. You can either sign up for singles, doubles, or both. I chose to play doubles. If you play doubles, you keep the same partner throughout the season. (6 matches, 1 per week). You can play against people your own level or you can play up. We decided to play up for the challenge. We didn't expect to win any since this was our first season playing ARTL and our first time playing as partners. (It takes a while to learn to "dance" with a new partner.). We just wanted the experience and to learn all we could! My partner Kelly and I are both newbies to tennis. Neither of us picked up a racket until 6 months ago. Kelly is very athletic, however, and played softball for 20 years. She pitched, so her serves are killer! We ended up losing the first 3 and winning the last 3. We were ecstatic! Many of the doubles partners we played told us they didn't win one game their first season. During our short season my poor partner was plagued with one thing after another... First she picked up a virus from her toddler's preschool. (She played with a fever and ran off the court and threw up 3x after our match.) Then she slipped on her front steps and cracked her ribs. She was also in the middle of moving (very stressful), and ended up getting shingles. I have tennis elbow (intense elbow pain) and planter fasciitis (intense heel pain). Despite our illness/injuries, we can't seem to make ourselves stop playing. We decided we are officially tennis junkies and need rehab! Ha, I guess the first step is to admit it:)