Hello from South Bend, Indiana! Life here at Notre Dame has been amazing. I am so happy to be on fall break to have the time to relax, recuperate a bit, and give you all an update on how these last couple months have been. I learned very quickly that life at ND is very busy, and free time as an athlete is rare, or non-existent all together. My schedule consists of classes from 8:30 or 9 (depending on the day) to noon, practice and fitness in the afternoon from about 3 to 7, and studying until I cannot stay awake any longer.
One thing you learn quickly here as a student is that going to class and completing homework is simply not enough. Students are expected to spend time outside the classroom during the week learning on their own about concepts of the subjects. As a non-student-athlete, this is a viable expectation, but when 4 hours of my day are cut out because of athletic obligations, it makes things seem nearly impossible. Luckily, Notre Dame has one of (if not, the best) student-athlete support systems in the country. Tutors are offered to student-athletes for nearly every class, contrary to the their common notion, as a time saver, not as a helper in comprehension. While tutors are very helpful in understanding certain materials more deeply, they make things easier and less time consuming in a busy schedule. I was a bit hesitant to get tutors at first, but after consistently staying up to the early hours of the morning studying, I thought it necessary to give them a try. The independent college life, I have found, has been all about decisions, and that is one decision I am glad I have made. I tend to think of school, social life, sports, and sleep as the four S’s of college, and tutors really help out putting some of the school hours into sleeping.
Aside from the day-to-day grind of class, homework, practice, homework, I have been able to enjoy the football weekends, charity events, and tournaments in which the team has participated.
Football weekends are crazy. Notre Dame is a pretty small campus (our total student population is no more than 12,000, graduate and undergraduate students), but our stadium holds over 80,000. So, you do the math, the stadium has capacity for a lot more people than just the students and faculty. By Thursday and Friday of home game weekends, people are already tailgating off campus, and you can tell that the size of the average campus tour increases tenfold. The place comes alive, and becomes more like a circus compared to the normal quiet, serene setting on which the University prides itself. Coming from Austin though and growing up going to UT games, I love the football weekends here. They make me feel right at home.
A cool parallel between ATA and ND is that of service. The Notre Dame community offers a large service component to its students. It is customary for each sports team to have a certain cause for which they raise funds and awareness. For the men’s tennis team, our cause is multiple sclerosis. A few weekends into the semester, we hosted two clinics benefitting MS at our home courts, one of which was for the South Bend community, the other for the Notre Dame community, which included the softball and men’s basketball teams. It was a really fun event and a good way to gain some fans, and get to know some of the other student-athletes on campus. For more information on that particular event, you can check out this link to the full story: http://www.und.com/sports/m-tennis/spec-rel/090913aaa.html.
As for the competitive aspect of the tennis side of my life here at ND, I could not be happier. The fall is a time where teams really try and build off of their previous spring season, and our guys have been working towards that. The guys on the team are awesome, and I have been very impressed with the culture of the team: supportive, diligent, and committed just to name a few attributes.
We’ve had a fun fall tournament schedule so far, including trips to Chicago and Ohio State with ebbs and flows of results. My first opportunity representing the Irish was at the Olympia Fields Country Club Invitational hosted by University of Illinois. This tournament was on clay, a rarity for any college event. While I will admit I was a bit nervous for that tournament, I posted my first few collegiate wins against solid players from Memphis and Illinois, and learned some valuable lessons moving on to the next event a few weeks later, which we were hosting. Other teams that competed in Olympia Fields were Texas, Virginia, Memphis, and Kentucky.
I have come to realize the perks of home court advantage in college tennis. For our tournament, the Bobby Bayliss Invitational, there were players from Louisville, Cleveland State, Michigan State, and Western Michigan. As a hosting player, however, your schedule is almost the same. For example, you sleep in you own dorm room on campus, you eat the same meals in the dining halls, and you can go to your locker in between matches. Everything in the tournament is just the same as it is during the week when we practice, which makes me much more relaxed. I had a great weekend, posting a 3-1 singles record, 2-1 doubles record, and being recognized as the most outstanding player! If you care to look, the whole article is here: http://www.und.com/sports/m-tennis/spec-rel/100713aab.html.
As I am writing this, I have just returned from Ohio State where we competed in the Regional Championships. I played fairly well, reaching the round of 16 in singles before falling to the current number 3 player in the country (who ended up beating our number 1 guy 7-6 in the third in the finals today…heartbreaking), and the quarterfinals of doubles, losing to the same guy (who also beat our number 1 doubles team 8-7 in the finals, another heartbreaker). While I played good matches throughout the tournament, I was psyched at getting the opportunity to compete at the highest level of college tennis. That’s what any freshman can ask for, right? College tennis is too fun.
Next up on the docket before classes start again on Monday is a trip to Austin! Part of the Notre Dame men’s tennis team is coming down to Austin this Wednesday to compete in the UT Invitational over the weekend. For those who are in town, we would really love for you to come out to watch some great college tennis… and maybe leave your UT gear at home and show your support for the Irish ;)
I really miss everybody at ATA, and am thankful each day for the invaluable lessons I learned in my time as an academy player there. I am doing my best to represent y’all up here in the Midwest!
I could go on and on talking about the past couple months in my time here, but that being said, I am leaving an open invitation for anyone who is in the area and would like to see a behind-the-scenes tour of campus as a student-athlete. The campus is beautiful, and if anyone is ever in the Chicago area and wants to make a day trip down to see good ol’ God country, hit me up! It is only an hour and a half (if that) from the Chicago area.
Until this weekend and Christmas break, Go Irish!
Josh