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Beating up the handicapped

I love tennis. Let me change the tense on that before I mislead anyone into thinking I�m still likely to do anything even remotely as physical as tennis.

I loved tennis.

Watching tennis tournaments like the U.S. Open always tends to make me reflect fondly on the time that I used to play. Yet another time in my life I managed to reach the pinnacle of mediocrity. My first year on my high school team was my sophomore year, and my doubles partner was probably the first straight male friend of mine I had. At least, he was the first since I had started to realize that I was not like all the other boys and girls. Since puberty, my friends have been almost exclusively women. Where I grew up, boys like me were beaten when they were discovered, and I hoped that I had half a chance of defending myself if the only people close to me were teenage girls.

My doubles partner was a goof. He was a senior, and he was one of those people that everyone likes, simply because you can�t help it. But he was also one of those people that could easily slip from your thoughts and memories because he never let you inside his head enough to really understand why you liked him so much. For a long time, I wondered if it was his way of not being discovered. Actually, I still wonder.

We didn�t make the varsity team, but we should have. We won every match we played, but we had to play the junior varsity teams. The JV teams were mostly made of freshman and the physically challenged � those awkward teenage boys that grow up to be accountants. It was fun to be undefeated the entire season, but as a sophomore/senior team, every time we played it felt a little more like we were beating up on the handicapped.

I noticed the other day while telling some of these stories that I have no memory of my junior year. I have no idea what position I played on the team or who my partner was. I think I spent the entire year wishing I was still playing with my old partner, and the disappointment of him not being a part of the experience made it simply unremarkable.

My senior year we lost almost all of our decent players, and I was thrust into a position near the top of the team. I clearly didn�t belong playing in such a hard position, and to make it worse, they gave me a freshman to play with. A very tall and uncoordinated kid who hated me. He made up for the lack in his physical talent by being extremely obnoxious and aggressive towards our opposing players on the court. He was the Charles Barkley of the team, and I was the Woody Allen, always making jokes and disparaging comments about our team and apologizing to our opponents for not being able to play better.

We quickly made losing poorly habitual and the season was pretty much a dismal failure, but I at least managed to make some friends with people on the opposing teams who laughed at my jokes on the court. At the end of the season, there was a regional tournament where the best players in the district were awarded a chance to play in the Colorado state tournament. By this time, I had a death wish for my partner. At odd times in matches I would smash a tennis ball into the back of his head, just for the fun of it, often after he�d been doing something incredibly obnoxious to our opponents. Then I would look across the net, make eye contact with one of the players on the other team, and share a secret smile.

I watched one of my favorite teams from Central High School play a match during this tournament, where I sat alone and cheered them on as they played a very tough team. I saw the Central teammates and family members watching me from their cheering section in the stands, curious as to why someone from a different high school would be cheering for members of theirs. After Central lost their match, we all walked together to another court, and they had to play me and my partner for the last qualifying position to go on to the state tournament.

Central had beaten us three times before during the season, but something inspired us and we took control of the game from the very start. It was the best we�d played all year long. Just as it looked like we would win easily, something changed in the air, and our true abilities started to present themselves. Balls flew into the net, over the fence and into an unsuspecting crowd, into the backs of each other�s heads� anywhere but back into play. We turned back into Barkley & Allen, him screaming obscenities and me attempting to distract the other players with a comedy routine.

At an extremely important part of the match, I watched a ball drop 5 inches inside the baseline, and I called it out. It was a moment of weakness because I was so desperate to win just once. And it was my last match of my high school career, so I lied and I called it out. When I saw my partner smiling at me, I knew I�d sunk to a new low, and I walked over to the net and apologized to the other team, told them I had made a bad call, and the point was theirs.

It didn�t take us long to lose the match after that. My partner wouldn�t look me in the eyes. My coach walked away from the court before we�d even finished shaking hands with our opponents. When I walked out of the court, I walked out alone. I stepped out of the way to let the Central parents get through to congratulate their sons, but they stepped aside with me and congratulated me instead. The fathers shook my hand and the mothers kissed my cheek and said they hated to see me lose to their sons, after I cheered them on in their prior match and played this match like such a gentleman.

I often think of that last call before we lost. It still surprises me that I found myself so desperate to win in that moment that I was willing to lie. But what surprises me more is that I managed to do the right thing in the end. I always knew that winning isn�t everything, but this was the first time I realized that sometimes it�s even better to root for the other guy to win.