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Winning is Fun for Fish 2/16/2005 As a young girl, Amanda Fish spent her time tumbling and flipping around a gym. Then she watched her older brother have success on the tennis courts and decided to do what he was doing. Today, she’s an integral part of the Vanderbilt women’s tennis team, which is currently ranked No. 6 in the country. After cruising to a 5-0 start on the season, the team recently dropped its first decision to the Georgia Bulldogs at the National Team Indoors in Madison, Wisc. The Commodores rebounded the next day, however, defeating the University of North Carolina to improve their record to 6-1 and put them right back on the track to a national championship. “The national championship is the ultimate goal,” Fish said, “but the main goals are to have a good time and to work really hard on and off the court. We really just want to have a fun season, and I think that we will.” If success counts for fun, then the sophomore from Scituate, Mass. has already had more than her fair share of fun in just her first two seasons at Vanderbilt. As a freshman, she went 29-8 after beginning the season on a 17-1 run. On the doubles court, she posted a 20-10 record playing with two different partners. She has put herself in the position to equal, if not improve upon, each of those finishes this year, as she has gotten off to a 5-2 record on both the singles and doubles courts. Fish credits a large amount of this season’s success — and fun — to playing with her newfound doubles partner, freshman Taka Bertrand. After the graduation of two seniors and the loss of two other key contributors from last year’s Final Four team, Fish was left without a playing partner last fall. She played with several teammates throughout the fall, as Head Coach Geoff Macdonald searched for the right combination. Fish and Bertrand figuratively sealed their fates together after fighting their way into the finals of the Furman Fall Classic last September. They are currently the No. 20 doubles duo in the nation, and figure only to get stronger as the season continues. “We have a very good relationship,” Fish said of Bertrand. “We’re good on the court together — she keeps me motivated and positive, and just brings a whole other aspect to my game. She’s such a fighter, and has such passion, and I can feed off her energy a lot. That’s something that really pulls us together, and makes it fun to play.” Fish puts a lot of emphasis on having fun on the court and not being too hard on herself this spring. After spending much of last fall injured (including the whole month of November, when she was out with a stress reaction in her shin), she is ecstatic simply to be on the court. Since giving up gymnastics and club soccer around the age of 11 to commit to competitive tennis, she has long been aware of the time and dedication elite collegiate tennis requires. With only a month and a half to prepare for her first matches of the 2005 season, Fish somewhat reverted back to those beginning days of serious tennis, when the sport began to dominate not just her weekends but her life: she put the pressure on herself in December to play catch-up with her teammates and prepare for the spring’s opening matches. “I definitely had to pick it up when I started playing at the end of December,” she recalled. “At first, I felt a little behind because everyone had the month of November, but I worked hard on and off the court.” That hard work helped Fish easily win her first matches of the year, against Michigan State, as she defeated the Spartans’ Christine Bader, 6-2, 6-0, at the No. 2 position, and paired up with Bertrand to secure their first win at No. 2 doubles, 8-4, over MSU’s Bader and Keri Thompson. Fish never looked back from there, even coming from behind after dropping first sets to win singles points over Virginia’s Kristin James, Notre Dame’s Christian Thompson and Wisconsin’s Caitlin Burke. She was named the SEC Player of the Week after her performances at MSU, Virginia and Notre Dame. After her hot start to the season, Fish dropped both singles and doubles points to SEC rival Georgia and then North Carolina on consecutive days at the National Team Indoors. Despite the disappointment of hard-fought losses, she has taken away important lessons from the two frustrating days. “I’m definitely too hard on myself on the court, that’s the first thing,” she realized. “I need to be more positive with myself. I also have a tendency to just rip it, and that’s something I need to work on — I need to be more patient, and let points go a little longer.” Undoubtedly, Fish will continue to take much of her experience on the doubles courts with Bertrand to the singles draws. Her style of tennis may not vary with or without a playing partner, but she admits that her attitude does. “I’m pretty consistent with the way I play tennis itself,” she said, “but I’m a lot more positive when I play doubles because I’ve got that other person out there and we build each other up. That’s something I need to work on for singles — to build myself up even more.” Fish will have her first chance to reveal a more positive attitude — and get back to her winning ways — when Rice comes to Nashville on Saturday, Feb. 19. As seems to be the case with anything concerning Amanda Fish, she is off to a great start in chasing these goals as well. For one of the central links to a nationally dominant team, having fun seems to be a priority. But then, winning is always fun. |
