Here Goes Nothin’ // A Welcome to 1MB
Welcome to The 1MB Series (1MB = 1 More Ball, one of my favorite tennis mottos). I’m Nolan Marks, the Director of all things 1MB. With the help of some awesome people, I’ve been able to create a dream of mine. Simply put, 1MB is a place for us ex-college, washed-up athletes to compete again.
Some background about me. Tennis is my home; it’s given me life. Tennis has given me my wife, my friends, loads of life lessons, and opportunities to travel the world. I owe so much to this weird-ass beautiful game. Tennis gives me so much and I have been doing my best to give back. With a day job as a tennis teaching pro, I enjoy every day on court (haha, well, that’s a lie, some days it sucks - but I love it nonetheless). I love coaching tennis, playing tennis, and watching tennis; and after all these years I still love learning as much as I can about this game.
In the past two years in Cleveland I’ve been lucky enough to have met some great people who I now consider close friends. (The dingles crew in Cleveland is ELITE.) It started with 30 minutes dingles hits and 60 minutes of singles points. This quickly turned into 90 minutes of straight dingles. Brief synopsis of dingles: it’s cross court battles that turn into a crash to the net for some and a baseline grind for others. Dingles forces us all to play our roles and I really think it’s the best workout in Northeast Ohio. If it’s not the best workout, it’s at least the most fun.
These group hits gave me the confidence to start playing some singles matches again; they gave me the false belief that I was fit and could handle a match or two a day over the weekend. Now that I had my confidence, I was ready to set out and put it on the line. I quickly found there was one issue. THERE AIN’T SHIT TO PLAY!
I couldn’t believe how few playing opportunities existed for high level players in the area. It was time for that to change.
What started as, “hey, any interest in playing a small one day singles event next weekend?” quickly turned into one of the most fun days of tennis I’ve ever had: our very first 1MB event. The inaugural event had sponsors. Us players had friends came out to watch. We laughed. We cramped. We competed. We all lost to Peter… (F’ that guy)
1MB Inaugural Event Group Photo
What really changed it all for me was the after-event at dinner. We all went out, had a beer, talked tennis, and couldn’t stop saying how much damn fun that was to feel that competitive passion and energy again.
For most of us, our days of competition die off after college. In Northeast Ohio, we can play a couple random 5.0 matches a year then it’s on each player to find their own way to continue playing. I sat at that dinner, hanging with all of my friends, and seeing this community start to fuse together and I knew I had something.
1MB was fully born that day.
Thank you for being here, reading this, and being on this journey with me. I cannot wait to grow this community and see all that 1MB can be.
-Nolan Marks, Creator and Director of 1MB Series
