As she sets up to serve or prepares for a return, Maria Gonzalez Cuervo toughens her face and racket grip and speaks to herself: “Va, va, va.”
“Come on,” is the English translation from the Spanish vamos, which the Inglemoor High junior tennis player abbreviates in pushing herself to try and win each point. And it’s obviously helped, since at press time the No. 1 singles player was 6-0 in league play.
The 16-year-old Viking exchange student who hails from Madrid, Spain, laughs when speaking about this, and notes that she has other “weird” habits like bouncing the ball several times before serving and making sure her shoes look perfect and she can see the Nike logo on her socks.
“Just be focused and think what you are gonna do,” Gonzalez Cuervo said last Wednesday. “The girls are telling me, ‘Yeah girl, you’re going to state — yeah, believe it,’ and I said, ‘Oh OK.’ I just do my thing.
“I have confidence in myself … I have so much fun because there are a lot of nice girls here,” she added. “Here, you are not only winning for you, you are winning for a team. At the same time (I am) winning for myself, I am winning for the other girl that is next to me — that’s nice, I like it.”
Added coach Chris Samuel: “In match play, her game is solid on all parts of the court. She has a strong serve that gets her off to a good start. She also has excellent ‘court-sense’ and knows when to attack and finish a point. Unlike many of today’s baseliner players, she will come to the net and end a point with a good volley.”
Samuel is also impressed with her player’s strength in completing 45 pushups in a minute.
Gonzalez Cuervo arrived at her host family’s Woodinville home Aug. 11 and will return to Madrid June 23. The local Fischer-Flyer family knew folks who hosted Gonzalez Cuervo’s two older brothers in Oregon and welcomed the netter into their home.
She noted that her parents wanted her to learn English in the states — and she’s done that in spades, along with making good friends and playing both tennis and soccer for the Viks.
Attending Anna Lee’s English class at Inglemoor has been a revelation for Gonzalez Cuervo. At first, she admitted to being shy and tried to figure out what was happening, but now she can go far beyond just “hello” and “goodbye” with her English vocabulary.
“I don’t so much speak in class, I just pay attention,” she said. “I prefer to listen to her (Lee) to learn how to speak English.”
Another eye-opening experience was attending football games at Pop Keeney Stadium: “I was amazed when I came here and sometimes in school there is a Viking Day, everybody wears Viking stuff — weird things and paint their faces — I thought was so fun. And the football games were so awesome, so big, so many people.” (No, Gonzalez Cuervo didn’t paint her face in Inglemoor’s black and gold, but she might try and get her Madrid friends to do so when she returns home.)
Gonzalez Cuervo began playing tennis recreationally at age 8 in Madrid and then took a step up to competitive tournaments with the Soto del Real club from about ages 10-14. She won many club tourneys and took her shot at a national tourney against older players; she didn’t win, but gained a wealth of experience.
After losing to some 17-year-olds and one 48th-nationally-ranked 19-year-old, she remembers thinking, “OK, you’re three years older than me, I don’t care … when I’m your age, I will beat you.”
The Viking said she quit playing competitive tennis for two years because there was too much pressure to succeed, plus she wanted to concentrate on her studies. She still played on the weekends for fun and was excited to come to Inglemoor and try her hand in the 4A Kingco Conference.
Local and Eastside tennis is a far cry from some of those Madrid club tournaments when she said players would often break their rackets, scream and cry if they lost.
“I thought that was pretty sad. It seems like they are kids — you are 16, Come on,” she said. “If you lose the first point, you have the second point, and if you lose the second point you have the third point. The game is not going to stop if you fail two points — the main thing is don’t get upset.
“If you don’t have fun playing tennis, it’s boring.”
She has fun — and entertains her teammates, as well — by routinely making “tweener” shots by hitting the ball between her legs while facing away from the net and converting the shot on her opponent’s side of the net.
While Gonzalez Cuervo misses her family in Madrid — she Skypes with them every Sunday — she enjoys visiting the Space Needle and the Pike Place Market and has made a true tennis friend in Inglemoor’s Trevor Shih, who has practiced with her a few times.
“After exchanging a few shots, I knew I would have my work cut out for me. Maria plays very similarly to her Spanish-born idol Rafael Nadal. Like Nadal, Maria never loses focuses and gives the same, incredible intensity every point. Simply rallying with Maria felt like a back-and-fourth chess match,” said Shih, adding that she is funny, calm and relaxed. “I would hit a strong cross-court forehand, and Maria would crush the return down the line. After playing against Maria, I felt as if I had just finished a marathon; there is simply never time to stop and catch your breath because of her grinding style every point.”
