Back on Location

Back on Location~~~
©Colette Lewis 2005
I was approaching my limit of days without live tennis, which is around 20, I believe. So I decided to hop in the car and head for the University of Illinois to catch a few matches at the new Chanda Rubin ITF event being staged at the Atkins Tennis Center.

The four hour drive from Kalamazoo goes from small town to major metropolis to farm country. With temperatures in the mid-80s it felt more like July than October, and only the tawny corn stalks and soybean harvesting signalled that winter will arrive, perhaps, according to the weather forecasters, as soon as Thursday.

I had heard that the Champaign-Urbana campus was rural, but I admit that the extent of the omnipresent farmland surprised me. (There were hybrid corn signs I'd never encountered before, and having grown up in southwest Michigan, it's not as if I'm unaware of the rigors of detasseling or haying.)

And as I would see soon enough, the Atkins Tennis Center had U of I barns, sheds, horses (and flies) as next-door neighbors. But once inside, as I viewed the Big Ten conference championship banners (8), the larger-than-life photo screens of the Illinois All-Americans, the cups and plaques and trophies that overflow two large cases, only then did I really begin to grasp the extent of Craig Tiley's achievement. There's nothing about the area or school that suggests tennis, and the whole scene seems as unlikely as stumbling across a polo match in North Dakota. But recruits are being wooed, even as the bulk of the team is currently in Tulsa, playing in the first big ITA tournament of the school year.

I was able to see only a few doubles matches this afternoon, but tomorrow I'll get an early start and watch as many girls and boys singles matches as I possibly can. I've got a lot of viewing to do in the only full day I'll be here.