The men's tennis team is taking turns writing the blog this season, and senior Daniel Coelho updates fans with the team’s Pilot’s Got Talent performance and the growing confidence on the court. Be sure to bookmark portlandpilots.com/MTENblog and follow the Pilots all season long!
Previous Entries:
Blog Entry #1 – Geoff Hernandez (Feb. 17)
Blog Entry #2 – Jackson Martin (March 1)
Blog Entry #3 – Michel Hu Kwo (March 7)
Blog Entry #4 – Alex Ferrero (March 20)
Hello Pilot Fans,
Following up from the last two entries, the foreign share of our team is stepping up again to update this blog. Here is senior Daniel Coelho with the latest news from the men’s tennis team. It is extremely important to emphasize the foreign aspect of my persona right of the bat. Grammatical mistakes and awkwardly structured sentences will certainly occur. Inevitably, it will lead to heavy bullying from my fellow teammates who love to make fun of the foreigners on the team. But there is a good reason to battle through my poor English: we have had very remarkable moments on and off the courts this year.
With an 11-4 record, we have beaten two ranked teams and enjoyed a ranking as the 45
th team in the nation. Last week we concluded a seven-match homestand, defeating Saint Mary’s (4-3), but losing to No. 23 San Diego (6-1) and No. 56 Oregon (5-2). In every spot of the lineup we showed a great effort, which gave ourselves a good win over Saint Mary’s and a good chance to beat high ranked teams. Even though we fell a little short on deciding moments, those matches showed us that we can compete against any team in the nation. Moreover, this streak of matches against qualified opponents highlighted some aspects of our games that will surely be improved for the upcoming matches. Since competing well is not enough for this team, we are working hard to improve our tennis so we can wrap up this season with big wins. This weekend we hit the road to play against No. 45 BYU Saturday at 9:30 a.m. (PST); send us good energy from The Bluff!!!
Now I turn to some of our remarkable moments outside the tennis court. I have had tough losses in my tennis career, but none of them were as hurtful as this one:
ACDC wasn’t enough. Who knew that the dougie was so influential…..
We did not win the talent show last year. But as athletes we are always eager to improve and learn from our defeats. Last year we learned a valuable lesson: Never underestimate the dougie.
Thanks to the dougie we captured the “Pilots Got Talent” trophy this year. Alex, Mike and Justin stole the show with their moves. I hope that the confidence gained from such an epic win overlaps to the tennis courts so we can keep on “rocking”!!
