I am a pretty decent, but scrappy player, but I'm not a ground-stroker, so I don't appear to be a tough opponent. I can't return a high powered left hand spin serve for the life of me.

For intramural tennis they just line you up randomly, judge you based on a few games, and then assign you to divisions 1-4.

I had played a couple seasons in the 2nd and 3rd division and was middle of the pack.

But one season in the middle of my "career," I had the ranking match against an obvious 1st division left-handed killer. I looked pathetic against him. I begged the ranker to not put me in the fourth division and he said he wouldn't put me there... but I ended up in the fourth division. I felt stupid beating up on a bunch of beginners, one of which was my boss at the job I worked at the time. I felt pretty dumb, but I was still happy to take the t-shirt home.

Later on, I won the 3rd division one year while my buddy was playing in the 2nd division, and my last semester I won the 2nd division (by beating my buddy twice in the double elimination bracket after losing to someone else that my buddy beat for me while in the winner's bracket). Side-note, I played Gary Trost's brother who was a teacher at the time (13 years after Gary had graduated), and he seemed pretty perturbed that I had asked him if he was Gary's brother; he didn't seem to be happy that someone would give his brother some recognition for some reason.

Perhaps the t-shirt gave me confidence to improve my game and eventually win the 2nd division (probably not, but it did give me some practice with ending matches quickly).