Tennis season starts at the end of April for the Durango High School girls tennis team. Yes, they're looking forward to playing well, but they're in it for the love of the sport. Sponsored by Durango Dental, Cryomedspa, Four Corners Eye Clinic, Durango Hot Springs, and First Southwest Bank.
The United States Tennis Association reports a dramatic 44% increase in the number of new players on America's tennis courts during the past year with more than 64 million athletes picking up a racket in 2020. The USTA attributes the growth to the pandemic, tennis, it says, is the perfect socially distance sport, but members of the Demon Girls tennis team say it's just a fun and challenging game to play.
The environment and the aftermath of it all, not only do you get nice and tan for senior pictures, but you also get to just get in some awesome shape and you can literally play with anybody, it doesn't matter if it's a boy or another little kid or a girl the same age as you, you can play with anybody and it's a lot of fun.
The Demon Girls tennis team won't start the season until the end of April, but the girls have been working hard at practice under the direction of coach Darren Tarsus. They're perfecting their serves, lobs and returns, plus they're working on their mental game, the hardest part of the sport to master.
It's really easy to get let down on shots that you don't make and if you make an unforced error, that can be pretty hard during a game especially. Yeah, and it's really hard to keep yourself motivated and up and energized and things like that.
I'd say just staying consistent with everything you do because some days you'll have really bad days and then other days will be great, and I feel like the bad days can sometimes make it very difficult, but
Both Mia Bolton and Amanda Whidden say the comradery that develops between teammates is one of the reasons why they stick with the team and all the practice it entails.
It's kind of a smaller sport, so, it's a smaller group of girls and traveling with not as many girls, you become really close, and with our traveling, we kind of switch up who stays in the rooms together, so you end up becoming pretty close with all the girls, so it's pretty fun.
And everybody who's not playing we'll go and find a match to support and we'll go and cheer them on when we can and say, "Good point", and things like that, and we're just really supportive of each other and things like that.
So far the girls have competed in one practice tournament in Farmington, but they're confident they're going to have a good season.
I think every single person on our team has a chance to get to stay and win, but I think it's going to take a lot of hard work in order to get there.
Thanks for watching this edition of The Demon Spotlight, I'm Wendy Graham-Settle.
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