More University Sport

Our quest to watch as much college sport as possible whilst here in Eugene continued today as we headed down to the University of Oregon campus to watch a spot of women’s tennis. This was a sport in which we were particularly interested. Many college sports stars go on to become professionals upon completion of University, however we weren’t sure if this would be the case with the tennis players - many of the players on the ATP tour have been so since they were 15 or 16 years old, and hence it is perhaps unlikely that 22 year old players from university go on to play professionally. We were interested to see the standard of the players and how the competition worked.

The ten strong women’s team were taking on the University of Southern California and the competition involved three 8 game doubles matches followed by six three- set singles matches. We missed the start of the matches after a bit of hunt around to find the tennis courts, and when we got there the matches were in full flow. We were amazed by just how good the players seemed. It was certainly a very high standard - fast paced with some great shots being played. Unfortunately our jinx of the Ducks continued as they lost every match. Chris was also disappointed to be out-shouted in a half time quiz to win a tube of tennis balls.

We stayed around a couple of hours but then had to leave before we froze to the spot. In my case it wasn’t helped by the fact I had been forced to put on a wet pair of tracksuit bottoms after mistakenly putting every single pair of my trousers in the wash that morning. Schoolgirl. We weren’t so cold though that we didn’t have time to stop by the campus track on the way back to the car to spy on some of the athletics team doing a reps session.

We may take a short break from College sport over the weekend now, before looking for some more competitions to go to next week. Hopefully our losing streak will not continue much longer!