Anika's Entry

By the time the clinician said I could return to competition, I had stopped asking at every appointment.

The fast work had come back in pieces. First I could take a ball out of the air, then recover without thinking about the calf, then make the same movement at the end of a long session. Ivo had fed me the ugly balls, the ones a player reaches with a body already going the wrong way. I had stopped when a session ended even if the last shot had gone badly. The clinician assessed the progression, heard what I could and couldn’t do, and gave me a return plan with no guarantee about the result of the first match.

I left her room with permission to enter an event and no particular person waiting for me to do it with.

Anika was at the Vale. She had finished the event I…