Commentary: Thresher tenure inspired men's tennis appreciation

By Casey Michel     4/22/10 7:00pm

It was late 2006, a few weeks into classes at Rice, and I had no idea what I was doing. I was crisping on the metal seats at Jake Hess Tennis Stadium, the courts splayed in front of me, empty. I was a freshman, out on my first assignment. Men's tennis beat reporter. Old-fashioned and metallic gray tape recorder in my pocket, my notebook on my lap and 20-odd questions scribbled in the margins: "Biggest surprise last year? Toughest match this season? Postseason predictions?" All that was missing was my fedora and a tweed jacket. Also missing was any semblance of what my job entailed.

I hadn't come to Rice to be a sportswriter. If I'd had that idea when careening through my high school's halls, I would have tried to end up at Medill or Cronkite or Newhouse. Instead, I was stuck, cornered by Lovett, Rayzor, Sewall. And maybe it was all for the better - having come in without any experience, I probably would have found myself in a celeritous fight-or-flight situation, sinking amid all the otherwise-qualified applicants when the Thresher put out a call for sportswriters.

Instead, with numbers diminished on an already sports-phobic campus, the job was mine for the taking. So I ran with it, burning up at Jake Hess, eyes slitted in the heat and uncertainty.

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Four years later, and I'm sitting on my balcony at Brown on a Wednesday afternoon, febrile and jittery as I wait for Friday to come. The shakes do not come from the fact that today is my last day of classes, the end of the rigors of the best years of my life. Nor do they come from the anticipation of a weekend's worth of evenings spent bar-crawling and beer-ponging; they are but extenuating ways to spend my time. Instead, I'm looking forward to today because the men's tennis Conference USA tournament is finally here.

It's a stark change from the boy who sat in the blazing bleachers four years ago. Then, I'd come to Rice for baseball. With the team's mention in Rice's presentation, I was hooked, ineffably believing that my small-time baseball skills augured a big-time future. Combine that with Rice's academic rigidity, and I was set.

Baseball sat as the source of my nascent love for Rice. Not . men's tennis.

I'm not going to say that the latter has usurped my affection for the diamond - if anything, my love for baseball has been augmented by the multiple experiences I've found within and without the hedges. I'm merely saying that, in covering the men's tennis team for four years, I've been reminded time and again that sports, often denuded by the trappings that money can bring, can maintain its authenticity even at a high level.

Baseball still stewards the athletic department, which makes sense - check the bullpen banners if you're confused. But where the other teams flail and fall, there is one non-baseball program - discounting the women's track and cross country teams, of course - whose success remains staid. In my four years, the men's tennis team has been ranked within the top 25 every year. This year has seen them drop, relatively precipitously, and yet they're only at No. 41 in the nation. They consistently make the NCAA Tournament, consistently send representatives to the singles draw and consistently find some of the best recruits in the nation.

They also carry perhaps the school's most tumultuous, most baleful rivalry, coming against the University of Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane has taken down Rice in four-straight C-USA Tournament finals, often in an aggravating and stultifying manner. Four second-place trophies line Assistant Coach Efe Ustundag's office. He doesn't shudder or cringe when you bring them up - second place is no small feat, after all - but you get the feeling that he wouldn't mind trading them all in for that first-place hardware that has eluded the team for so long.

This weekend will present Rice with its best chance in years, beginning today at 2 p.m. against the University of Southern Mississippi. The Owls took down top-seeded Tulsa in a regular-season match at Jake Hess two weeks ago, a contest with enough chippiness that a brawl didn't seem out of the question. Should Rice make it to the finals, the team will likely meet Tulsa, currently 36th in the nation, for the rematch.

But will anyone see it? Besides the octogenarians and the athletic department's scorekeepers, I'm typically the only one in the stadium. A couple stragglers fill in here and there - people on their way to the track, officers strolling from the police station, freshman vagabonds lost on the wrong side of campus. Occasionally friends sprinkle the stands, breaking up the monotony of the otherwise empty seats.

And that's usually it. No raucousness, no signs, no body paint. All of which adds up to a distinct lack of home-court advantage, and a better shot for those at Tulsa to take home a fifth-straight trophy.

So come cheer the Owls on this week. Please. For the love of God. I know it's not my job, and I know I forfeit my objectivity when I'm trying to push them on, but someone has to, right?

Now, I could be a kibitzer here, someone pounding you and hounding you with advice that you don't need between your problem sets and your hangovers. But I'm telling you - these guys deserve it. They fight for you, drenched in sweat and wrenched in pain, with enough tennis elbows and tweaked ankles and strained hammies to make you wonder just how far they're willing to push themselves. And they've got as good of a shot this year as any of finally topping Tulsa's summit.

I don't know; maybe I'm just feeling crotchety, fed up with this school's lack of support for its athletic teams. Maybe I've just been to one-too-many empty student sections, one-too-many games where the maroon or the burnt orange drown out any blue and gray that may venture to our home contests.

Or maybe I'm just feeling grateful to a team, to a program, that helped me find what I truly love. Helped me find a plan post-Thresher, post-graduation, post-Peace Corps. Helped me find my way.

For that, I will always be grateful. For that, I will always be cheering.

Casey Michel is a Brown College senior and former Thresher editor in chief.

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