Our SaddleBrooke Tennis Club's 40 and over 7.0 mixed doubles team (Double Trouble) had another successful season this year. It started off on a sad note as one of our players, Shirley Dunbar, injured her knee and could not participate on the team. So, that necessitated switching players around who could play together as she could not play with her husband, Mike. Mary Jo Quilling graciously joined the team, not having a clue how many matches she would get to play. We ended up in second place with a 5-2 record. The winning team went undefeated at 7-0. We had to play them the very first match of the season and were still adjusting to playing with different partners. We lost 1-2, but came very close to winning another court. I believe had we played them at the end of the season we would have won.

USTA Sectionals this year was held at the El Conquistador Resort on Oracle Road. Since USTA likes to give each team five matches they sometimes offer "wild cards" to teams to fill out the tourney. We were offered a wild card. Sectionals were held on September 26-29th. If you happen to remember those days the temperature hit 106 degrees and was an extremely windy weekend. With those conditions and playing against a lot of 40ish players, I am sure it will be a sectional to remember. All of the players got to play three matches. Even though we did not win any matches, one has to remember the conditions we were up against and the young ages of our opponents. Plus we did come very close to pulling out some wins with several of the matches going to a third set tiebreak.

A big thank you goes out to Jill and Tim Frost, along with the help of Mary Jo Quilling in hosting a pre-sectional pizza party at the Frost's beautiful home. Tim did a fantastic job baking all of the pizzas in his pizza oven. Since many of us were scattered around the country this summer it was a great way to get the entire team back together for some fun and fellowship prior to playing.

Hopefully next year STC can field two or three mixed teams. So, to all of you STC members consider playing on a team next year. I'm sure any of our players would tell you it was a lot of fun.

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