Playing on a USTA League team often involves juggling a busy schedule to make time for practices and matches. Now imagine playing on 38 of them.

 

That’s exactly what Nancy Trimble did last year. A native of Frederick, Md., Trimble has competed on nearly 150 USTA league teams over the last five years, including 38 in 2013. Her weekends frequently involve driving to numerous matches in the same day. In fact, on a recent Sunday Trimble competed for USTA League teams in Annapolis, Fort Meade and Carroll County.

 

“I have a lot of miles on my car,” she said. “My husband was a career naval officer, so I know a lot of people in different areas.”

 

In addition to playing, Trimble also co-captains two teams with a friend and recently started captaining a 55 & Over 6.0 team. Inevitably, there are times when teams she’s involved with are paired up against each other.

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“People will joke and ask, ‘So are you with me or against me today?’” Trimble said. “It’s all in good fun, though.”

 

Trimble first began competing in USTA Leagues in 1994. Still, for all her experience, she has still been able to achieve new milestones. One of her Mid-Atlantic teams recently competed at the the 55 & Over 7.0 National Championships in Surprise, Ariz., marking the first time she had made it to Nationals. She also was also bumped this year from a 3.5 NTRP rating to a 4.0; as a result, she's competed on a mere 17 teams so far this year.

 

Trimble estimates that she devotes anywhere from 15 to 20 hours per week to USTA Leagues, which she combines with her work as an administrative assistant at a hospital. But despite the lack of down time in her life, Trimble said she wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

“I thought I was doing this for exercise at first, but what I’ve taken most from this is the camaraderie,” she said. “I played interclub tennis in Florida about 30 years ago and ran into one of the women I played against at Sectionals in Virginia three years ago. We would take our young children to the matches and now those kids are grown up and married. It’s pretty amazing.”