Forty-seven

WE MANAGED TO GET ALMOST HALF the wall sketched on Sunday.

I was thankful I wasn’t doing this alone. Five of us working and we managed to get half the wall sketched in a weekend. We weren’t slow. We didn’t have all that much time to work. We didn’t have decent light until eight or eight-thirty. With the canvas awning over us and on both ends, the daylight was even more limited. We had to quit by four. At least we were getting four or five minutes more daylight every day, so by the next weekend, there would be half an hour more light.

Doc called me aside and calmed me down when I was about to panic and declare the whole project a loss.

“Remember, Tony, we’re only working weekends and short hours until you have your quarter break,” he said. “We’ve got weather, daylight, and volunteer hours to contend with—not to mention the temperature.” Top temperature this week had been forty-five degrees. We were all working in layers to keep warm. “Without heavy-duty work lights on the wall here, we can only get seven hours of work on a good day. If we get a lot of rain in April, we’ll have to consider getting lighting in under the tarp. I’ve got some ideas on how to light the wall. Just hang in there. You’re doing a good job so far.”

I needed those words of encouragement. I still went from being pleased and proud when I finished a square foot of wall sketching to being totally panicked when I looked at the thirty-two hundred square feet of the total. Fortunately, there wouldn’t be much sketching to be done on the bottom six or seven feet of the wall. Since we were treating the wall like it was a mirror tilted forward, the first few feet, up to the top of the doors would reflect the narrow strip of pavement and the track. I was going to delegate that portion to Sandra and Melody since they were so good with textures.

The week was a blur of study, write, and beat a little blue ball against a wall. I had some catch-up to do for my classes and that included a massive amount of reading and a paper that Professor Strait gave me an extra week to complete. We had a killer section exam in Human Physiology and I had to meet with Clarice between that and Literary Criticism.

But all week long, it was beat the little blue ball.

I’d been negligent in my training while I was trying to get the wall project launched. We needed a name for that, too. I didn’t know what to call the thing. I figured something would come to me. But starting Monday afternoon, Lissa had me on the court and reminded me that I was now just four weeks from National Intercollegiate Championships. We’d competed in local tournaments, but they were all club tournaments. There just aren’t enough teams locally for an intercollegiate tournament and the school wasn’t funding long trips, not that we had time to leave for five days to go to California anyway.

I played every team we could field. Walt frequently got the brunt of my attention as the only other guy on the team who was playing singles. Brent and Franklin took their turns and when that wasn’t enough, I played the two of them. When Tonya was able to practice, I played against her and Whitney, but Tonya’s schedule was just beginning to loosen up as the SCU women’s basketball team had just been eliminated from the playoffs. Something weird, though, was that the eliminated teams continued to play each other, even though they were no longer competing for a title. She was at least making our two team practices a week now. Of course, Whitney was ramping up to leave racquetball and hit the spring track meets. She was hoping for a berth on the Olympic team, but admitted that she was still a foot short of Olympic competition in the long jump and probably needed to shave two seconds off her hurdles time in order to keep from being humiliated on the track.

Both Bree and Rachel were driving each other on the court. Both were small and had been cheerleaders. Rachel still was a cheerleader, but football and basketball were the only sports the cheerleaders really worked. When I looked at them on the court, I kept thinking we need a peewee league for women who weigh less than a hundred pounds. At five-two and one-ten, Bree looked like an Amazon next to tiny Rachel. They could both hide behind Whitney or Tonya.

Since Whitney joined Lissa and me last week on our play day, she was much more relaxed. It was like she got over some big hurdle. Lissa had the two of us do some doubles work. Lissa couldn’t compete in the Intercollegiate, but Whitney and I could become a mixed doubles team. It was John who came up to Lissa and told her that unlike opens, there was no mixed doubles division at Intercollegiates. As far as I could tell, the entire team was planning to travel to Tempe.

Racquetball is a club sport, not an NCAA sanctioned game, so tournaments are a little different. First off, any collegiate player can enter the Intercollegiate Championships. We all had to be tested and ranked for what division we would play in. I was already ranked as an elite player and would play in Division One. Franklin and Brent were ranked at our tournament before Christmas and would play in Division Two. It looked like Whitney and Tonya were going to be in Division Three, and Bree and Rachel would be in Division Six. We really didn’t know where Walt would be placed. It looked like it could be Division four, but he was such an athletic player that the judges might move him into Division Three. We had to get a USAR official to give final blessing on our divisions.

The Intercollegiates are also different in that even though it is a national championship, it is a qualifying event for National Singles. Sam had already given approval for anyone on the podium at NIC to go to National Singles, even though that’s not actually an Intercollegiate event. Anyone who entered the Intercollegiate was eligible to go to National Singles. The college would pay for their trip to Fullerton, California if they placed in the top three in their division. The big prize, of course, was that the winner of the Men’s and Women’s Division One Gold Singles would be named to the U.S. Adult National Team. That was a huge deal and would include international competitions. Lissa was on the U.S. Adult National Team last year, but she declined the appointment because she just can’t travel that much with the boys. She did a lot of travel to competitions before we got together in her first year as an Opens champion and was pushing me to get there.