continuing the Wisen legasy

Hamilton Wisen chose to come to O, Dea to follow in his brothers’ footsteps, and this year, he’s doing the same with tennis.

Wisen is a Junior at O’Dea, this year is his first year playing tennis. Last year, for the two years before this, Wisen had been a goaly on the lacrosse team. This year, however, he has decided to start something new. Wisen decided to put done the lacrosse stick and pick up the racket.

This decision did not come easily to him as he loved lacrosse and was a great team player and leader on the field. However, Wisen wanted to take the opportunity this year, to do something bigger than his own self-interest. Wisen had two brothers pass through the school, Masin and Trueman. They were both great tennis players and led the school to many wins. Wisen decided this year that he wanted to continue his brother’s legacy of tennis at O’Dea.

“Both my brothers played (Tennis) here and I thought it would be pretty cool if the legacy of tennis went thew me,” said Wisen.

This was a big challenge for Wisen as he had not played a lot of tennis before and only knew the basics. This meant he had to learn from the ground up. The season started off hard for him and the team as both did not get off to a good start to the season.

This does not mean that the team did not have stand outs this year as Lorenzo Neri had a great season. He won almost all of his individual sets this year and was the team’s only win in the playoffs.

Wisen had a great time this year learning how to play tennis and has become such a fan, he has started to play with others outside of school. This year, Wien has gone out with lots of people to play tennis down at his local court, Lower Woodland. A few weeks ago, I went down to lower woodland and played him, and it was a great time. I could not tell that Wisen was new to the sport as he beat me easily. Wisen says that there is something about going outside with friends to play tennis that he really enjoys.

“ I don’t really know why but I’ve been going down to Lower woodland a lot this year playing with different people… I was playing with Wyatt (Ashley) the other day,” said Wisen

One of the reasons he has become such a fan is it simplistic. Tennis is one of the easier sports to understand and pick up. After the first week of practice, he was hooked on the sport. He loved how simple it is to play. That being said, Tennis is know way an easy sport to play. Tennis takes fast reaction speed, great footwork, and hand eye coordination. This was great for Wisen has all these things translate over from lacrosse goalie to tennis.

This year was not just about having fun for Wisen. This year was about continuing his family’s legacy and keeping the Wisen name playing tennis at O’Dea.