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Love Means Nothing

Chase Lenz

Love means nothing . . . in tennis anyway. But don’t say that to Maywood High School Sophomore, Von Fritsche, who won his first doubles match at the Nebraska State Tennis Tournament representing the McCook Bison on October 15^th and 16th. Von and his doubles partner lost the next match against Elkhorn South.

Fritsche’s had a love of tennis since he started playing when he turned eight years old. Ever since then he has enjoyed tennis and has recently started playing on the McCook team. Von is now a sophomore and is repeating his success from last year when he was a freshman. He took some lessons in his freshman summer, and after that he started summer competition. Von says that the reason he started playing was “He was in a stage in his life that he wanted to play every sport he could and tennis stuck.” Fritsche went on to add that “practices are long and competitive but “I enjoy every second of it!”

Von practices in McCook every day of the week, and he says that he gets along with the McCook kids very well. Von’s record this year is 18-16. He puts in around 22 hours a week in practicing his sport. When he’s training for a meet he says that he just tries to consistently repeat his same routine and works on enhancing other skills. Many athletes have a pre-game ritual they perform to focus for the upcoming competition. For Von it’s listening to music.

In tennis the term love means having a score of zero or nil. Where did the game gets its affectionate score for zero? "Some theorize that love arose from the French word for “egg,” l’oeuf, because a zero on a scoreboard resembles an egg."  - Wikipedia