Guess What Happened to Me Today? - November 2025

My former college doubles partner, Danielle, and I coach tennis at a brand-new high school in California. Being a new school, we initially struggled to find a league and were placed in one that is not geographically close to our school community. One thing the Bay Area is known for is traffic, and the reliance on volunteer drivers to transport players to matches during the onset of commuter traffic has been a hardship.

Danielle coordinated drivers until 10 p.m. the night before our first-round matchup against a team that had been undefeated in the league for nearly 13 years. Knowing I couldn’t drive players, as I had an afternoon meeting, I hit the road later. Danielle and our assistant coach arrived on time with the team for warm-ups.

On the last part of my drive, Danielle called, “It’s pouring rain, the other coach is calling the match and sending players home.” September rain is unheard of this early in the fall for our region. After carpooling 30 players, in what is considered one of the worst commutes in the San Francisco Bay Area, we all went home. The match was rescheduled, but rare fall rain was forecasted for the new date. An idea came from our assistant coach, “What about a double-header?”

We planned for a double-header later that week; both teams would play their regularly scheduled afternoon match, grab dinner, and then the twice-rained-out match in the evening. Our first match served as a warm-up with a 9-0 win, and after dinner we were ready to play again.

In the second match, our doubles teams had close competition. Our line three doubles team fell in the third set, line one doubles was down 4–5 in the third, and line two doubles held a 6–5 lead after trailing 1–4 in the first set. Still playing at 9:00 p.m., the lights above shut off, and the courts went dark.

The match had been determined with us having won five lines, so we could have gone home. However, the doubles teams wanted to play it out. Fortunately, the home team was able to get the lights back on, and the remaining two lines of doubles resumed play. Not shortly after getting the lights back up, an entire family of racoons came out of the bushes looking for supper in the trash cans between the tennis courts. We won the two remaining doubles lines, won the match 7–2, and remained undefeated in the first half of the regular season.

Watching our players laugh together by the glow of their phones when the lights went out made the chaos worthwhile. Creating memories for our student-athletes and ending the night saying, “You can’t make this stuff up” because we were on campus so late the raccoons came out, are what makes coaching high school sports worthwhile.

Monique Paris Anderson is a special education teacher, girls tennis coach and assistant boys tennis coach at Emerald High School in Dublin, California. She is a member of the High School Today Publications Committee.