Timing is twice as challenging with a doubles’ team

John G. Siy and Carlos Ruiz work together for a joint cause. They are part of the Boys’ Tennis team and they play as a doubles unit.

Siy feels that playing on part of a Doubles team is an interesting experience since it’s a different dynamic to playing Singles, a role he’s more familiar with. Playing Doubles has taught him more strategies for tennis and how to play with another person. Although having less experience than Ruiz, , he’s still very confident, and his goals are to do the best to his abilities and to improve so he can help the team get some wins and “possibly help get into MEL champs, because that’s what the team aims to do,” he said.

Siy doesn’t see tennis as a career in the future, but he does see it as a pathway into being a well-rounded student. He said that he believes tennis can help him get into good colleges.

Ruiz has a little more experience. He was encouraged by his friends who started playing in his freshman year, so in his sophomore year he decided to join the team. Now, in his third year on the team, he admitted that he really likes the sport.

Although Ruiz doesn’t think tennis is very hard, “it takes practice to get good at it,” he said. His goal is to go to the Monticello Empire League (MEL) finals this year, but he doesn’t see tennis as a future career. Instead, he feels that tennis is an easy sport to pick up.

Both boys think that they’d learn more from losses because they can find out their shortcomings and find a way to fix them during practices. They work extremely well together and work hard to influence the overall scores of the team.