My odds worsened with a teammate

Korey Love, left, and Anita Lee have been doubles partners for two seasons with a record of 31-13. Leewas named the Missouri Valley Conference Tennis Athlete of the Week Tuesday. She has won the titlethree times during her career. Love was named Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete last season.REMY ABROUGHT • DAILY EGYPTIAN

Korey Love, left, and Anita Lee have been doubles partners for two seasons with a record of 31-13. Leewas named the Missouri Valley Conference Tennis Athlete of the Week Tuesday. She has won the titlethree times during her career. Love was named Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete last season.REMY ABROUGHT • DAILY EGYPTIAN

By Aaron Graff

Communication is key in team sports and journalism, but when two journalists play sports together, it can get ugly.

My challenge this week was a 10-point tiebreaker in tennis against seniors Anita Lee and Korey Love. It was the first and only week I had a teammate, more or less… “Helping me.”

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Tyler Dixon, a senior from Mounds studying journalism, is my boss. I will not write bad things about his tennis skills, but his career, like mine, should remain in a newsroom. He has more experience in tennis than me, and he would probably beat me, but we should never be tennis teammates again.

Even though we were down 3-0 early, we seemed to actually surprise Lee and Love. Dixon’s first serve was in play, and Love crushed it right back at us. Lee then served to me and I surprised myself returning it with a backhand.

Earlier in the year, men’s tennis coach Dann Nelson told me to hit more forehands… I let him down.

Regardless of my return, Lee spiked it right back to me and scored the point. We needed to change something up.

Dixon told me to give him hand signals before his next serve, even though we never clarified what the signs meant. Women’s tennis coach Audra Anderson said even that can be useful sometimes to make the other team overthink what is coming.

It did not help our cause.

It may have been because I yelled, “We don’t even know what these signs mean!” Then again, it might not have been.

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They won the match 10-0. We didn’t return any more of their serves either.

I must point out, I did score once against sophomore Jonny Rigby in singles. Even though it was on a double fault, it allows me to blame Dixon for our loss.

Who am I kidding? I am 0-10 in this series.

Anderson said Lee and Love are the team leaders. The two have been doubles partners for two seasons and have a 31-13 record. Love began playing when she was six, and Lee began when she was 10.

Love won the Florida State Singles Championship in 2009, and was ranked 86th in the nation by TennisRecruiting. net.

Lee was ranked right behind her at 87th and led her high school to four state championships in Nevada. She won the singles championship in 2007 and the doubles championship in 2008.

They said Dixon and I would need a lot of practice and to communicate verbally in the middle of a play, which they do often, to be a better team.

We practiced by playing singles against each other, but I would end up hitting it over his head, which made him chase after the balls.

The women’s tennis team competes in the Missouri Valley Conference championships this weekend in Normal, facing Bradley University Friday.

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