Story By Fatima Valadez | Photo by Elijah Lopez
Tennis Coach Marco Valdez says this year he feels his team needs to understand their roles as leaders and competitors.
“I think my players are having to work a lot harder to make up for our seven players that we lost last year, [but] our games have showed dramatic improvement,” Valdez said.
This is Valdez’s second year of coaching tennis at Roosevelt High School, but he has come from other schools and has been a coach his whole life since age of 16 .
“It’s what makes me happy,” Valdez said.
Valdez’s players ended up on the team for different reasons.
“It seemed like an interesting sport, so I tried it and I [never] thought that I’ll be good at it,” junior Elizabeth Ochoa said.
Many people would think that they aren’t good at things, until they try them as what happened to Ochoa. Senior Kevin Vallecillos, on the other hand, said he is interested in tennis because it’s a fun and competitive sport.
Coach Valdez said that the varsity girls are picking up a lot of slack at their tennis practice. The next game will be against Johnson High School on Wednesday on Oct. 3 at 4:30.
