When a team is more than the sum of its players
Above: Dominika Dieskova and Ceci Olivos congratulate each other on their doubles win against Washington.
by STEFANIE LOH
photos by JOHN GIVOT
Internal strife has befallen the usually indivisible members of the University of Oregon women’s tennis team as they sit around their tiny locker room deep within the heart of McArthur Court, having an intense, important discussion.
“I like the tight black top,” Anna Powaska says, her curly blond ponytail bobbing as she leans over to lace up her tennis shoes. “We should wear that and the meshy skirt.”
“That one’s too tight,” Monica Hoz de Vila protests at the same moment that Dominika Dieskova points out that, by principle, she does not wear black. “How about you guys wear what you wore last weekend? The green top and white skirt?” asks the sole male in the room, Oregon coach Paul Reber, in search of the quickest solution to a seemingly simple problem.
Their differences temporarily forgotten, the team unites for a split second to vehemently veto Reber’s suggestion. They can’t wear that. They’re not the basketball team — they don’t have an equipment manager on hand to wash uniforms for them after every match. They haven’t had time to do laundry since the last match and won’t have time to do it before they leave for Denver the next morning. This is ridiculous, they say; they need more than three options for matches.
They're from all over the world, and everyone brings something new, something fresh.
From where he’s perched on a bench at the front of the room, Reber cringes and sighs in exasperation. Usually assertive with effective conflict-management skills honed from years of training, the coach quickly realizes that in this case he’s way out of his league. “Okay, okay. I’ll try and get us more match clothes, but can we please just pick something?” he begs. “This is taking up the entire meeting.”
“Siwa,” Reber looks pointedly — and hopefully — at Powaska, “It’s your turn to pick, so what do you want to wear?”
“I already picked, but no one likes my choices!” Powaska, whose nickname “Siwa” (pronounced shiva) means “grey-haired” in Polish, protests in exasperation. “Clo wants something else, and Hozi doesn’t like it.”
Reber pushes his yellow Ducks baseball cap more firmly onto his head, looking as if he wishes he could disappear into its confines, “Okay Claudia, what would you like?”
“I don’t care. I’ll wear whatever,” Claudia Hirt says, sounding resigned. “Me too,” Carmen Seremeta says, eager to get the wardrobe selection out of the way so that the Ducks can finally start practice.
While their uniform disputes are one of the more convoluted logistical nightmares of day-to-day team operations, Powaska says it’s also one of the most fun parts of team decision-making. And it’s one of the few times that one will ever see the Ducks arguing. Aside from bickering over clothing choices or the occasional disagreement about dirty dishes in the house that four of them live in, the six members of the Oregon women’s tennis team are a team in every sense of the word.
“Everyone’s so open. It’s one of the characteristics of this team,” Mexico-born Ceci Olivos says. “So even though you’re new, you feel like you’ve known [the team] forever.”
“I think our team is different from everyone else,” Powaska says. “We’re more like a family. It’s really unusual. We’re from all over the world, and everyone brings something new, something fresh, and we all just complement each other very well.”
With the exception of the collegiate level, tennis is an individual sport. On the junior circuit known as the International Tennis Federation, most tennis players grow into the game with the mindset that they’re competing for the betterment of themselves and that the individual is all that matters. All the women on the team have had some experience with the individual game and varying levels of individual accomplishment at the international level.
“I knew that once we got on the court, we’re not friends; you just have to kick her ass and hope that she’s maybe going to fall and sprain her ankle.”
Poland-born Powaska and Bolivia-native Hoz de Vila trained at two of Europe’s most prestigious tennis academies in their formative years. Hirt played the Switzerland club circuit, and Slovakia-born Dieskova traversed the globe with a personal coach, playing tournaments with and against the likes of current professional Women’s Tennis Association notables like Shuai Peng, Dinara Safina, Karolina Sprem, and world No. 4 Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Many different factors have brought the women together in Eugene, Oregon, an unlikely gathering point for a group of women who have all harbored dreams of playing professionally at some point in their lives. Some, like Powaska, view their arrival at the collegiate doorstep as the twilight of their careers, a final hurrah before retirement. Others, like Dieskova, ended up in the collegiate game because the high costs of playing professionally became too much for their parents. Still others, like Hoz de Vila, were lured to America by a scholarship that would allow them to simultaneously continue their education and their athletic careers — something very rare in Europe and Hoz de Vila’s native Bolivia.
Regardless of their motivations, the women transitioning from the pro game to the collegiate one quickly realize that they have entered a different world. In the esprit-de-corps environment of college tennis, there are seven points up for grabs in each team match or “dual.” Two teams first face off against each other in three doubles matches, and the team that manages to win two of the three doubles matches is allotted a single point. Then the teams field six singles players, with each singles match worth one team point regardless of individual match scores. At the end, the team with the most points within this best-of-seven structure wins the dual.
Above: Claudia Hirt serves during one of the Ducks’ doubles matches. Below: The team gathers to support Monica Hoz de Vila, who is engaged in battle against Washington's Joyce Ardies on Senior Day.
Most players who transition from playing individual junior tennis to the collegiate game experienced an initial shock at how much less emphasis is placed on individual excellence and how much more rigorous the schedule is compared to the relative leisure of the individual circuit, where players train daily but also have the luxury of deciding which tournaments they want to enter and how far apart they want to space their match days.
“The transition was hard,” Olivos admits. “Because in the season, we’re playing every weekend. Sometimes we have three matches in a weekend, and it’s so fast. Sometimes when you’re playing bad or serving bad, you don’t have the time to stop and focus.”
The Ducks had one weekend off throughout their three-month, twenty-three-match season. The women practice daily, with court time supplemented by conditioning workouts twice a week. When they have to travel for matches, they leave either Thursday or Friday and often don’t get back until Sunday night. They have to finish homework in time for class on Monday. Then the week starts all over again.
“It’s not like playing individual tennis where you can stay mad at your game. You just have to get over it and keep going,” Olivos says. “Because you can’t stop. It’s not about you. It’s about the team. And like times when you lose but we win, you don’t have to be mad because we won. I think you learn not to be that hard on yourself.”
Many of the women say that at some point in their pre-Oregon tennis careers, the selfish mindset required to fend for oneself at the lower echelons of the junior tour took its toll on them.
“Tennis players are all about the individual — taking care of their own business. And that’s how most individual athletes are,” Powaska says. “I had friends in this environment, but I knew that once we got on the court, we’re not friends; you just have to kick her ass and hope that she’s maybe going to fall and sprain her ankle.”
Dieskova welcomed the instant network of support the team element brought to a game where many players thrive on being an individual.
“The team thing was so weird at first but then became kind of nice,” says Dieskova, who has the most extensive pre-Oregon resume of all the Ducks. “On the pro tour, even when you have a friend or maybe someone you used to hang out with when you were younger, it’s more like, ‘Good luck.... unless you’re in my half of the draw. If you’re close enough [in the bracket] to me that I could play you, it’s like OK, I’m gonna kill you.’”
