This week, former ATA standout Claire Cahill checked in with us from her new home at Washington and Lee in Virginia. See what she has to say below about her first few weeks away from home and ATA, and how she is adjusting to hew new life in college as a student-athlete.

Hi Coach Newman, Coach D and everyone at ATA,

I've been meaning after I saw Blake’s email to write one of my own but I have barely had two seconds to put something down and I've only been in class one full week since us crazy north schools start so late. I laugh because everyone calls this a "southern school", it doesn't snow in southern schools people, I'm from Texas! (There actually are a ton of Texas people here so that makes me feel right at home) But anyways I have a 1 hour break between my "I See Dead People" Writing class, and Calc 2..and while I should be doing some of the ridiculous amount of homework I have, I got Coach D's message and knew I would rather spend this time giving yall a quick update, well probably not quick since I have some time, but an update.

I started both class and tennis the Friday before last and my time management has already had to immediately improve. Every second I have after class and before practice I spend doing homework or studying, they definitely don’t start things slow in college. The last two nights especially I was in the library until 2 AM doing work because we were gone at a tournament all weekend! My first experience is a college tournament was overall a pretty good one. We played 6 matches each, 3 doubles 3 singles and it was such an exhausting weekend, but I love my team and it’s such a fun group. We played 2 small D1 schools, Liberty and Longwood, and then Mary Washington a pretty good D3 school, we all enjoyed beating the bad D1 schools. I got to the finals of my draw (definitely should’ve won it..) serving underhand too so that was an experience, my coach says my underhand serve is better than my real one soo I might need to work on that. But my coaches are so great. We have a young coaching staff, my head coach is only 30 and we just got a new assistant coach Bianca Svensson, she graduated in 2010 and played at Alabama. She’s a really good asset to our team already.

Our fitness is tough but I've clearly been well prepared (Estevam, Bianca is finally giving us her Alabama workout sheets!) We have a wonderful hill and massive set of stairs that we get to sprint up and down so that’s always fun. My coach's emphasis is toughness, not a foreign concept coming from ATA. Our team didn’t do as well as normal last year but we have a good little recruiting class this year, me and three other freshman, and then we have some really good girls coming in next year who will immediately start and we're only losing one senior so watch out for my team in the next few years.

I already have a recruit for October! And he had me talk to one just in for the day yesterday, so I'm glad he thinks I'm a good person to trust recruits with. In October my recruit is actually Meghan Buell, the girl from the Ohio team we lost to at JTT Nationals the first year. So that'll be fun.

My classes are tough because everyone is a genius here and the professors know that. This liberal arts concept is a little interesting because I have to broaden my interests and take classes from every field, for example I'm in a class called Intro to Music to fulfill my fine arts credit. I'm undecided in my major though as of now so I guess it's good because I'll be able to see what kind of stuff I'm really interested in after taking all these random classes.

My schedule isn't quite as packed as Blake’s, since even though we practice a lot the main focus is academics of course since the schools tough (we never will miss class for travel, something I'm really glad about). Our practice time varies usually it’s 4-6:15, with about 30-45 minutes of that conditioning, but sometimes he splits it up into two practices since our team is MASSIVE. We have 16 girls on the team, and 2 are abroad right now (including our line 1 so I haven’t been able to hit with her) so 18 total. I like having a big team though because it makes practice really fun, we blare loud music and everyone walking across the bridge on top of our courts stops and watches us. I have been able to play some challenge matches but there’s not a ladder in this mini fall season, we only have like 2 more weeks until its over. I also have hit with some of the guys team, including our line 1, he's good but they need some help if any of you ATA boys want to come join me, yes please! The next two weekends are ITA's at Mary Washington, and ODACs which is our conference championships that we always win. ITA’s are a big deal there’s some good top D3's playing and if we were to win, the 8 girls playing would automatically be All Americans.

Well there's my life story so far, I love Virginia, love this little college town, love D3 tennis, and am having such a great time, I hope everything’s going awesome at ATA and I miss everyone and still stalk you guys on Tommy's news stories. I hope to see everyone at Christmas, sorry this update is a novel, I just got done with writing class forgive me! BYE!

Claire

PS I hope Sydney and Brooke are doing an awesome job with the POW WOW's :)