March 3, 2010

Throughout their careers, Northwestern seniors Lauren Lui and Samantha Murray have been two of the driving forces behind NU's rise to the level of perennial powerhouse. During their final go-rounds with the Wildcats, "Speeds" and Sam will keep NU fans current on the program's latest happenings in their blog, "Serve and Volley."

Hey Wildcat Fans,

Sorry for the brief hiatus last week, I know a lot of you were bummed out when "Serve and Volley" wasn't updated. But I will do my best to make it up to you guys today.

Just to update everyone, last weekend we went to Notre Dame and suffered our first loss of the season. It was disappointing, but the Irish played really well and they just came out swinging. However, through this loss we learned a lot and worked very hard at practice the following week to fix any problems. Claire (Pollard) really focused on doubles and I think everyone really improved. We were determined to work on our games and have a better result the next weekend against Illinois and Georgia Tech.

So our match against Illinois was scheduled for Friday night at 6 p.m. It was a very tricky time because it was close to dinner. We didn't want to eat too much where we were too stuffed to move on the court (If you haven't realized yet, food is very important in our program...everything pretty much revolves around it.) Our solution was to eat "dinner" at 3:30pm. We went to this Italian restaurant, and it was completely empty. The hostess asked us if we had a reservation when we stepped in. We all looked around and were like, "Are you serious?" Fortunately, they had this huge room for us that could sit a party of 25.

OK, back to tennis. The doubles point was very heated. No. 2 doubles was in a very close tiebreaker while No. 3 doubles was down a few matchpoints. I had a hard time deciding which one to watch, but watching Linda Abu Mushrefova step up in her first collegiate match was amazing. She stuck balls that were probably coming 70 mph at her like a true champion. Eventually, Linda and Maria Mosolova prevailed with a ridiculously long tiebreaker. Then all the attention moved to court three where Samantha Murray and Kate Turvy battled back to a tiebreaker. They got off to a good start and finished it off with some amazing reflexes and acrobatic moves by Sam. At the end of the night, the 'Cats took the `W' with a 5-2 win over the Fighting Illini.

On Sunday, we hosted Georgia Tech. In all my years at NU, we've always had great matches against the Jackets and this was no different. With a little shake-up in the doubles lineup and despite a slight power outage at SPAC, we won the point. During the singles portion, we got off to good starts and didn't look away. We ended up winning 6-1.

I would just like to thank all the alums that came out to watch our match on Sunday. We really appreciated all your support this past weekend.

On an ending note, I will leave you with a short story. On our trip to Notre Dame, we rented two vans from Northwestern. We got a normal minivan and a bus. When I say a bus, I mean a bus. It was a Chevy Astro (just Google it and you'll know what I mean). This bus had to be the oldest thing I've ever seen. I thought they stopped making cars like this, but I guess not. It had no automatic lock, so each of us had to manually lock it and remind each other to lock it. The windows would crack open, and the seat belt was obnoxious and very annoying. Eventually, it grew on us and we named it Bruce the Bus. Bruce could fit our whole team plus five more. Surprisingly, nobody broke into him, but Jackie Holden, our assistant coach and often our chauffer, hopes that we never have to take Bruce on another road trip.

GO CATS!!!

Speeds