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Name
J.B. Wogan |
Year of Graduation
2006 |
Hometown
Owings Mills, MD |
High School
St. Paul's High School |
Degree
English |
College
Pomona College |
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What have you been up to since graduation? Where are you living? What are you doing? |
Current residence: Seattle, WA
Occupation: Freelance writer/editor
Current Publications include Match Point, Jewish Transcript News, The Comics Journal, and the Journal Newspapers |
What impact (if any) has the Hellhen Tennis Program had on your life? |
| It’s hard to talk about the impact of sports without dipping into clichés and bad sports metaphors. Suffice to say that tennis at Pomona provided structure, focus, friendship, and a healthy dose of physical activity for all four years of college. I continue to be surprised by tennis’ influence in creating connections—spiritual, human, athletic, and career alike—and if nothing else, tennis was an opportunity to become completely submerged in a curiosity, to see the growing pains and rewards of such a long, grueling endeavor. |
What was your fondest Hellhen experience? |
The most meaningful experience, and the one that sticks out in my mind as a turning point in our program’s path, was the afternoon and evening after losing to Westmont my junior year. It was the first match of the season. I had personally played an embarrassing match, full of the kind of fearful, nervous tennis that characterized a lot of Sagehen tennis my freshmen and sophomore years. When faced with pressure, I collapsed.
On the ride back, two teammates, both ranked behind me in the lineup, made it their mission to console me, lift my spirits, and turn my attention to improving my mindset and game in future matches. Though they could have seen this moment as an opportunity to ascend the lineup (and both did later anyway), they chose to be supportive. This kind of selflessness had been missing in the team’s previous years, and it set the right tone for my last two seasons as a Hellhen. I’m sure there were other times like this, perhaps even before that match, but tending to your teammates before yourself became a kind of unsaid motto that season, and I think it’s remained even today.
In addition to those two teammates who helped me to my feet directly after the Westmont match, I had other help as well. In the weeks that followed, my coach met with me before my morning classes, sometimes as early as 6:00 a.m. to work on restructuring my kick serve so it wouldn't fold in tense situations.
Even after these sessions, another teammate, one who couldn't play because of a shoulder injury, spent his Saturday afternoons offering outside perspective and drilling suggestions on how to further improve my service motion, the arc of my kick serve, and my positioning after the serve. If you can believe this, he would feed me balls and offer critiques of my game, and he did this thankless act even though he wouldn't play another match his entire college career.
The greatest moment in my time as a Hellhen was the moment that I realized we were all in the same ditch together; we had no All-Americans, no senior talent, no freshman phenom, and our success as a program would be determined by a strong joint effort, and nothing less. That was an exciting time. |
Do you have any advice for those considering the program? |
| Know the coach and know the school. Your happiness in college will largely depend on your relationship to the coach and your experience of the school (outside of tennis). Visit as many times as possible. Talk with sponsors. Talk with other prospective students. And attend matches. You can learn a lot about a team and its coach by seeing them in competition. |
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