Zombie Herd Comes Alive at Section Championship
When you hear a team named the Zombie Herd, you figure there's got to be a story behind that one. So we tracked down San Francisco Tennis Club 3.5 captain, Mike Zehr and the rest of the zombies after their first day match, unfortunately their first loss of the season.
The team name "Zombie Herd" originated when teammate, Matt Drescher discovered tennis in 2006, his final year of grad school. Living in Montreal and completely stressed out over a failing research project, Matt found himself wandering around a sports store. “I’d not played ANY tennis in the last 15 years and really not much before that either. Something compelled me to use what little money I had to buy a racket.”
Matt started playing and found that smacking the ball just took him to another place inside his head. Tennis eased his stress and he soon resolved his research dilemma. “I was a believer!” Matt recalls and he soon became a tennis addict, playing every day.
A Ukrainian touring pro giving lessons near by showed compassion (or pity!) giving Matt cheap lessons. Matt often stayed up all night with his research then left at 7 am for the only court time he could After watching this regular, sleepless routine, on -30 degree Montreal winter days, his girl friend proclaimed that I was a "tennis zombie". She then rolled her eyes and went back to sleep.
It seemed the more Matt played tennis, the more things in his life just fell into place. He eventually moved to San Francisco and joined the San Francisco Tennis Club. Someone commented on his consistent singles game, and Matt described it as a "Zombie style, you know Zombies just keep coming even when you shoot at them; eventually they over run you.”
The rest of the team understood immediately what it meant to be a tennis zombie and it just made sense to call themselves the Zombie Herd. Teammate Simon Kao added, “Up until Districts, we didn’t have a team name, but because we're all tennis nuts, we decided we're a herd of tennis zombies.” When asked about socializing together, teammates all looked at each other with a quizical stare, and responded, "What socializing? We play tennis ALL THE TIME."
Thomas Yankowski added that the “Zombies” are a great combination of young and old, the youngest being their 9 year old mascot, Joey, son of Steve Mogavero. The generational differences have brought the team together and all the way to the Adult Section Championship. Go Zombie Herd!!.