The Saturday of Oct. 12 was a busy day for Shanghai American School Pudong’s season one athletes. With volleyball heading to Concordia, baseball heading to Puxi, and tennis heading to Shanghai Racquet Club for a friendly day of competition against our neighbors across the river, it looked to be an eventful day.

But for the varsity tennis team, the day started out on low spirits as 11 weary, unwilling children gathered outside Jingqiao Starbucks for an early morning at 7:30 a.m.. The long and delayed bus ride lacked the usual chatter and excitement that filled the air as everyone plugged into their AirPods and went to sleep. Still suffering from the traumatic defeat to Puxi from last year, no one was expecting to win.

What they did not know was that Puxi, with their first girls’ singles graduated, their second boys’ singles moved away, and their second girls’ singles out due to the ACTs, wasn’t looking too good either.

Of course, this did not mean it was going to be an easy day for either teams. There were some longer matches, quite a few match-points lost, and definitely more than a handful of complaints about the disorienting clay courts.

But as the day dragged on, things started to look up for the Pudong team. Girls singles were the first to grab a win, followed by the doubles teams, ending with an undefeated streak for the boys. Rising along with the scorching afternoon sun was the spirit of the team.

By the end of the day, the varsity tennis team was able to leave the courts with their heads held high on an impressive record of 17 matches won out of 21.

After the unexpected win, Chloe Hui, sophomore, said “I felt relieved because the match was really close and especially because it was on a surface we’re not used to.”

Also crushing Puxi that day were the Pudong varsity boys’ baseball team that beat them 25-0, varsity boys’ volleyball team that clinched a D1 SISAC win, and junior varsity girls’ volleyball that dominated in D2 SISAC.