Winter Southerns B16-Mobile, AL

Someday this all will be history but for now this is our family’s everyday stuff. 

This year again Winter Southern’s for Boys 16s was hosted by Mobile Tennis Center. So we flew to Pensacola, as always with Southwest, on points, then drove an hour to Mobile. We kind of know our way around there now, which is funny.

As usual, on the first day, the boys check in for the tournament and have a hit. Mark was playing doubles with Connor once again. 

It’s quite a large draw for doubles so Mark and Connor frequently get a bye. This time, they were number ONE seed which was a little surprising but well deserved. That means that their ranking combined was the highest in the whole draw of 64 pairs. 

Mark and Connor had a bye in the round of 64, won the first match 8:3 and then had a super tough evening match against William Claus and Ross Johnson to get to top 16. They won 9:8 (8:6 tiebreaker). It was quite a match with so many nail biting moments! 

Kelly and I were FREEZING but man...this was exciting. 

In the meantime, Mark was doing pretty well in singles too.  He won his first two matches and got to the Round of 32. 

And then he had to play against Griffin Goode again. Mark can beat him, I know it! But it’s been a long time since he’s done that. So he lost... And then in the consolation draw, the next day, he had to play a very strong opponent, Hrday, and lost in a close match 6:4, 6:4. He actually played really well in that match though! How do I know and remember all this you might ask? Well....the draws are still online-haha. 

Mark reading a book in the hotel to prove he is not always on his phone. 

So Doubles were continuing.. in the Quarterfinals, Connor and Mark played Simon Hayal and Taichi Shimizu. It was a bit of a crazy match as Simon was not being a good sport during the match, but the boys won decisively 8:5. Simon just walked away after the match not even talking to his partner. I have to say that Connor and Mark did not have an easy draw looking at who they had to beat. 

Next, in the semis, they faced five seeds--Artem Dmytrenko (a Ukrainian kid who is here because of the war) and Lenzen Decker, Artem being by far the better player. Frankly, we did not know what to expect from this match and know the boys were nervous. At first they were down 5:2, the whole time Artem talking trash to them and making very questionable calls. He was not even acting like himself, loudly yelling and saying weird stuff like “your backhand is so bad” to Mark and Connor. It was so strange that at some point I stood up and said in Ukrainian to his mom a few feet away “This is horrible behavior”. She didn’t look at me. But Artem definitely knew what I was talking about, and noticed I was appalled. Whatever happened afterwards is even stranger...after a ref stopped by, Artem and his partner stopped yelling crazily and talking trash. And suddenly...slowly...our boys starting picking up more points. Absolutely unbelievably, they won 8:5! Perhaps it was a coincidence, but as soon as the opponents stopped acting like jerks, they started losing. Needless to say, the parents of the opponents were really upset even at us, and said that “Kelly was crazy” which is the farthest from the truth. And the Ukrainian mom, who I had been chatting with for like a year and thought was friendly, just told me “I don’t have to talk to you”. It was the most dramatic and strange match experience we’ve had in doubles. Too bad..

The next morning, Mark and Connor had to play Griffin Goode and Johnny Wolfe. Sadly, they didn’t play as well as they hoped and lost 8:5. Still! Getting to the finals was huge! 

Here they are receiving their awards. 

Congratulations, boys! 

And the moms deserve a medal too! We are so proud of Connor and Mark!

One of the few pictures with Mark! 

I think this part of the hallway near the Southwest luggage carousel feels like home now as we so frequently end our journeys there, usually at 11 pm or so... Southwest companion pass for the win! 

And just for fun, I am including some of Mark’s action shots from his training here in Cary. 

He was wearing his hat backwards there for a bit. 

And so this tennis journey continues! So much fun! So much work and dedication! 

Lyana

 

Chasing BYU Tennis Team in Pennsylvania

If you were to ask me a few years ago if I ever would do what we did, I would say absolutely not-- it’s just crazy. 

But it doesn’t seem so crazy anymore-haha! 

Middle of February, we were waiting for find out if Mark was going to get into an L2 tournament. Only four L2s are happening in the country at the same time so the competition to get in is stiff. He was one of the top alternates for Arizona, so we were holding on to last piece of hope he would get in and I finally cancelled the ticket on Thursday evening. 

So instead, since we had a free Friday, we decided to fly to Philadelphia and drive to Lehigh University where BYU was playing against Vilanova on their “East Coast trip”.  It wasn’t a spur of the moment trip--I did book the tickets a few weeks earlier “just in case”.

We left early in the morning, got to Philly, got our rental car and made it to the site shortly after doubles was finished. We were the only BYU fans besides the parents of two of the Owen boys who are on the team. The reason we could just fly to Philly if we wanted to is MILES! It was a direct flight from Raleigh for only about 6K points per person and $6 for taxes each way. Great redemption, if you ask me! 

And what an experience! Mark couldn’t stop beaming just being there, next to all these amazing players! We got to talk to the parents of Redd and Hardy Owen who followed the team from UT. And chatted with all the players. They all couldn’t believe that Mark is just 16 and is so tall. 

After the matches, which BYU won 7:0 even without the number 1 and number 2 player playing, we all went to grab some lunch. 

We chatted with the coaches and just had a good time. I was still feeling pretty nervous, probably because they are college coaches. They weren’t obviously talking about recruiting in any shape or form yet because the date they are allowed to do that is Jun 15th before Mark’s junior year. How awesome it is to have this picture! 

And I love that they made the group to squish together and to get Mark in with everyone. 

So funny! 

A few of these guys are non-LDS and some are returned missionaries. It’s interesting because the ones that served in Brazil, Benin and Thailand couldn’t play tennis at all for two years. But Hardy was lucky and while serving in Slovenia was able to play tennis almost every day in the morning while being able to also teach and make connections with people. Now one tennis player Tennyson Whiting is serving in the same mission after a couple of years at BYU and then trying to make it on the pro tour. Amazing stuff! 

And after this fun lunch, we were back in the car, grabbing some treats for our drive back to the airport and catching our flight home. It was a crazy whirlwind trip, just a day trip, but such a memory for me and Mark!

Lyana.