This summer, between Mark's freshman and sophomore year, we have decided it would be a good time for Mark to make himself known to the BYU tennis coaches. So we planned six months in advance and registered Mark for a BYU Tennis camp for a one week after his FSY adventure in Wilmington.
Mark and I used Delta companion certificate and a regional upgrade to fly Business Class on the coveted direct flight RDU-SLC.
Beautiful sunset over Salt Lake.
We arrived on Saturday night at SLC.
And we spent a night at the Farnsworths' home in Green River. Erin and Dave are our good friends from Misawa and we try to see them when we are in UT. We went to church with them on Sunday and then after lunch made our way to Orem/Provo area.
We spent one night at Lisa's house who generously welcomed us. I stayed with her the five nights that Mark spent at the BYU dorms.
On Monday morning, it was SO fun to check Mark in to the tennis camp and find his room to get him settled.
I stayed a bit for the first half hour or so of the orientation to hear to what the coaches had to say. We were fortunate that the BYU Men's team's coach, Zach Warren, was running this week's camp.
While Mark was at camp, I got to visit with friends! We went to dinner with us all girls of the Wilson family--and that was super fun! I was their foreign exchange student 26 years ago!
I visited the Wests--the mission president and his wife whom I tutored in 2002 before they left on their mission to Ukraine. Robert and I even went and visited them in Kyiv that first time we went to Ukraine on a visit. I was happy to see them before they left on a second mission to CA this September.
I also got to see my friend Kylie who had moved to St. George, UT last year! It was so great to catch up! Kylie drove over 2 hours to see me, so I am super grateful!
Here is a picture with Lisa in the same spot where we have taken so many different family and pre-dance/friends pictures.
Finally, I got to see our friends, Kelley and Todd Dunn! We met the Dunns in the first year when we got married as we lived in the same apartment building. It was wonderful to see each other and talk about our kids and lives and how well things turned out!
When I had some down time in the mornings, I tried to take walks in Lisa's neighborhood. It was difficult to find good paths actually as it seemed that side walks just ended in random places. So a couple of times I drove to BYU campus and walked on the trails in that area.
Some days I went to watch Mark hit with other high performance UT players and also got to talk to one of the assistant coaches.
Mark had a fun time at the camp. They did a lot of drills, played games and matches and got to know each other. And in the mornings, they had him train with the BYU Women's team which was awesome and challenging.
In the evenings, the kids had a bunch of planned activities--ice cream, movies, water park, a dance. Mark met a lot of people but he still kind of likes to stick to himself to remain an enigma to many. And he is perfectly happy like that.
On the last day of camp (Friday), I was able to come watch him play in the last rounds of their matches.
At the end of it all, the coaches gave out awards to the winners of each group. They had over 25 "levels" of groups. Mark was in the best group and won the whole thing.
Basically, the legend of Mark Watson lives on at this point... hahaha. Apparently, two girls were at the tennis camp the week after Mark and both of them mentioned North Carolina or Mark and were told that Mark was by far the best player they'd ever had at the BYU tennis camp. It was funny!
Mark was well liked by the coaches and was able to have a good talk with both the head coach and the assistant coach. This is Jack, from Australia, the former BYU tennis player who is a volunteer coach right now after graduating from BYU. He and Mark got along great!
Right when the BYU camp was finished, we rushed to the airport to catch our flight to Denver!
Mark was playing an L4 tournament that weekend.
We had a lot of fun again with the Alleys. Isaac and Emma came to watch Mark one day.
Mark did pretty well and played a few great matches.
In the meantime, Robert was having his own adventure as he sold his 2011 Ford Truck after 4 years.
And he found a 2019 Toyota truck that is even taller. Midlife crisis, I guess.
On Monday afternoon, I met up with my friend Carrie Baldwin. We met each other in MN when we were in dental school. It'd been 15 years since we had seen each other! Social media helps to stay in touch.
Right after our meeting, we were about to start our drive to the airport to take an evening flight to SLC so we could stay in the hotel and fly to RDU in the morning, as part of the roundtrip ticket with Delta. Well, I got a notice that our SLC-RDU flight was cancelled because of the CRAZY outage that happened with major airlines systems! So I tried and tried to get us on a different flight, but everything was gone. So finally, I told Delta to just refund me the money for our tickets. And then I booked us on a direct flight on Southwest Denver-Raleigh for the following day. It just meant I had an extra night in CO...so I called Janeen and asked her if we could stay at her house for the night and, of course, she generously let us do that. We had another chance to go hang out with the Alleys and talk and talk with Janeen (Mark was happy to hang out with Emma and Isaac).
Side note: This is also the night that Katya called and told us that Sam broke up with her...which was quite a shocker for all of us, but all turned out to be for the best.
The good news is that the following morning we had no problems and managed to get out of Denver and get home quickly.
We had been gone for TEN days! That's a very long time...and poor Robert was on his own, all lonely, buying trucks.
I don't think we'll ever do a BYU tennis camp again, but I am absolutely sure that it was the right move to go to BYU to meet the right tennis people.
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