Oct. 6, 2008

Rob West, Ryan Hamning, Coach Etzkin, and myself took a long trip down to Tulsa, Oklahoma on Wednesday afternoon to compete in the All-American Tennis Tournament. This is the largest and most prestigious tournament in college tennis, so being on the accept-list is huge for small fish like CSU tennis players.

As we got in our rented minivan with our gear and snacks for the road, it dawned upon me that I should have brought a time capsule sparing me of the 14-hour drive that lay ahead of us. The first hour went by pretty quickly, as we were all talking and sharing news and stories from past to present. The second hour came by and conversation took a short decline. The third hit me like a smack in the face and I found myself bored out of my mind. I'm not equipped for long van rides. I'm from Denmark, a country where you can drive from one shore to another in 5-6 hours, so going 14 hours on a straight highway, which seems to never end is (still after two years) a cultural difference for me. Besides that I am too tall, boney, and introverted to sit balled up in such a confined space.

But after an hour with thoughts of self-pity and bad mood, I decided to man up and introduce myself to Coach Etzkin, who still to this day doesn't know a whole lot about me.

People who have met me here know that I don't engage in conversation too often. This is not always a personal choice, but more often because I don't feel that I have anything important or interesting to say. I frequently find myself wanting to talk, but since I have to weigh every word in my head and analyze whether it applies in the given conversation, the proper response comes too late and the ongoing conversation has already surpassed me.

Strange? Probably. However, I started talking to Rob West in the front seat and Coach Etzkin. And it was great to learn something about my coach. He spoke about his upbringing, how he got into tennis, what he was like on the court, what his parents were like; girlfriends, marriage, religion, friendship, life, and everything you would want to know about someone you care about.

It is Coach Etzkin's sincerity and devotion to the people around him that makes him a successful coach and a cool person to be around. The other two, Rob West and Ryan Hamning, aren't as interesting to me, because they're just simple people and I don't have to write a blog to suck up to them... Just kidding. Jokes aside, a long trip down the never-ending highway quickly became an interesting journey into the mind and heart of Coach Etzkin. This is starting to sound like a bad poem. My apologies.

Anyway, we made it to Tulsa. The city isn't much to write home about, so I won't, but the campus of the University of Tulsa is quite impressive. First of all it is big, way too big for the small number of 4500 people that are enrolled here. Second, their dormitories (apartment complexes really) look new but are architecturally beautiful. I can't go in to further details, because I don't know much about architecture. Their tennis facility was also extraordinary. It was 54,000 square feet and had: Six indoor courts, twelve outdoor courts, stadium seating for spectators with a capacity of 2,000, electronic scoreboards; 2 indoor, 1 outdoor, lighting for night competition, conditioning training facilities, staff offices, lounge, ticket/concession building, and of course a pro shop. Naturally we all began to feel important being there.

Our results didn't turn out the way we wanted them to, but experiencing a tournament, such as All-Americans made us feel part of something other than Horizon League. Here we were competing with the big dogs at the big schools and we proved that we aren't pushovers and Cleveland State has talent and potential reaching far into unexpected territory.