The Winning Season

Dec 1, 2016 | People

[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
images: courtesy Lucy Coleman”][/title]

Team members:
co-captain Lucy Coleman, co-captain Kim Simon, Jennifer Bailey, Michelle Butler, Leslie Cramer, Barbara Cross, Christine Curran, Heidi Dougherty, Regina Koonce, Tami Martin, Cathie Porter, Susan Pruitt, Ellen Shields, Heidi Stojanovic and Katy Ward

Coaches:
Bobby Banck, Melissa Kelly

It was a sweltering September day in Palm Springs, California. When the sun made its trek to its highest point in the sky, the temperature had reached ninety-nine degrees. On the tennis courts, with the sun bearing down, it felt a full ten degrees hotter, but that didn’t cause the Hardscrabble Country Club 4.0 Women’s Tennis Team one minute of concern. They’d been preparing for a day like this, perfecting their game and training in weather so hot, the California sun waned in comparison.

 

The Fort Smith, Arkansas team was in Southern California to play in the USTA League Adult 18 & Over 4.0 National Championships after a summer of victories. (4.0 is a designation that assesses a player’s level. The National Tennis Rating Program starts with a 1.5 level, which is someone just beginning, and goes all the way to a 7.0 level, which is a world-class player.)

 

The year before, the Hardscrabble team had lost at the State finals. While it was a setback, it didn’t make them doubt that they could make a comeback. So, when they returned to Little Rock in June, playing in 105-degree weather, they stayed focused, played hard and smart, and won the State title. And that secured their spot at the Southern Sectional tournament in Mobile, Alabama, in July. The humidity there rivaled anything they’d seen in Arkansas, but it wasn’t enough to affect their game. They won Sectionals and started getting ready for Nationals.

 

Teammate Cathie Porter and co-captain Lucy Coleman will never forget that win in Alabama. “They told us that the USTA League has 330,000 players and only 5,000 of those go to Nationals,” Cathie says. “In the 4.0 division that we’re in, that number is 200 tops.

 

“And we were playing in the 18 & Over division. There’s also a 4.0 40 & Over, and a 4.0 Seniors, which is fifty-five and older. For us, our average age on the Hardscrabble team is thirty-eight or thirty-nine. At Nationals, we had much younger players competing against us.”

 

id121277_0924rmjo005While the younger players had fountains of fortitude, the Hardscrabble team had experience, the power of deep friendships, and great coaching. For months the fifteen women had been practicing five days a week. They’d start at noon or one in the afternoon and play until three or so. They grew used to the intense heat, the sweat that soaked their clothes, the way their muscles ached at the end of the day.

 

During that time, they were working with their coaches, Hardscrabble Country Club Tennis Director Bobby Banck and Melissa Kelly, the director of tennis for the Western Arkansas Tennis Association.

 

“Melissa did High-Intensity Training that got us ready to play in the heat,” Lucy says. “And both she and Bobby worked a lot on strategy.”

 

Lucy and Cathie can’t say enough about their coaches. Bobby, who once coached tennis greats Monica Seles, Mary Pierce, and Jimmy Arias, has the unique ability to remember every move his players make. “He keeps all that in his head,” Cathie says. “He makes me think about where I hit the ball and being purposeful about it.”

 

“Everybody out there is hitting a great ball but they taught us strategy, and the importance of being mentally prepared,” Lucy says. That strategy, including the science behind how they stacked their line-up, proved invaluable.

 

Once in Palm Springs, their excitement intensified. When the Hardscrabble team advanced to the finals, they had to play five matches and win three of those. “The singles’ girl came off, and she’d won,” Lucy says. “The doubles’ girls came off the court, and they lost. The next singles’ court comes off, and she loses. Our next doubles’ team comes off, and they’d won, so we’re split now. Each with two wins, with our last doubles’ court playing. It was down to those two people.”

 

So, there they were, this team from Arkansas, gathered around the court watching two of their players take on two great players from Puerto Rico. “I think the team from Puerto Rico was about half our age,” Cathie says.

 

As the match started, Lucy and Cathie noticed many members of the teams they’d defeated earlier in the tournament, cheering Hardscrabble on. Even the Southern men’s teams had shown up to support them.Lucy laughs. “It could be that they were cheering for us because we were so much older.” Cathie smiles wide, remembering that moment when the final match ended with a score of 7-5, 6-4. “A lot of them told us they were there because we were such nice players,” Cathie says. “After we won, our husbands said, ‘You guys don’t understand how amazing it is to win Nationals. Not that many people win Nationals.'”

 

id121981_092416rmjo359-hprEven now, as Lucy and Cathie talk about that victory, they appear just a bit stunned by it. “We only have two players that played Junior Tennis: Christine [Curran] and Kim [Simon],” Lucy says. “The rest of us were volleyball players, basketball players, cheerleaders. The majority of us, myself included, started playing in our twenties. I was twenty-nine.”

 

Cathie says, “I was in my twenties when I started playing, and then I stopped for a long time after I had my son. When I was younger, I didn’t consider myself an athlete at all. I think that’s okay, that maybe you have to work a little harder because of it.”

 

Working hard is something this team loves. Another secret to their success is how much everyone on the team cares about each other. Cathie says Lucy is the most selfless person she’s ever seen, always putting the needs of the team above anything else. That opinion is widely held since Lucy has been named the Captain of the Year for Arkansas. She’ll receive her award in January at a ceremony in Little Rock at the same time the team is honored for winning the State Championship.

 

While the accolades are welcome, Cathie says there’s something even better about the Hardscrabble fifteen. “I’ve made some of the best friends in my life. Even when we’re not competing, we play tennis three or four times a week, even in the wintertime. We know the whole tennis community. People talk about having a best friend or two best friends, people they can count on. I always think how sad that is. I have so many more. Anytime there’s a crisis, we have friends who pick up the kids, cook meals, run errands, whatever needs to be done. And that comes from being part of this team.”

 

The two women have the kind of easy banter that comes from knowing someone for a long time, from feeling the certainty of their devotion. Cathie stops for a moment, checks the time on her phone, and then Lucy does the same. It is Friday and Cathie is heading out of town to camp with her teenage son at Petit Jean—they are on a mission to camp at every state park in Arkansas, and they have only two to go. It is one of the great joys she shares with her son, this mission to explore Arkansas, to imprint its beauty on their hearts.

 

Lucy shakes her head. Her daughters, she says, aren’t keen on camping. Her weekend will be filled with mornings and evenings catching up with these girls she loves so much.

 

Come Monday, Cathie and Lucy will be back on the court, playing the game they adore, with friends who have become like family. Who knows where tennis will take them next. Who knows what grand adventure waits just around the corner.

 

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