Coupeville Sports

Brian Norris (second from right), seen here celebrating Coupeville’s state championship in little league, has also become an accomplished tennis player after a little good-natured nagging.

Brian Norris plans to go down swinging.

“I hope to play tennis after high school and through my whole life,” he said. “It is one of those games you can play until you die. Which I plan to do.”

Hopefully the Coupeville High School sophomore has many more years left on the court to enjoy a game he picked up fairly recently.

“Mr. Stange, the tennis coach, was pretty much my inspiration to play,” Norris said. “Freshmen year he kept bugging me to play and he did so much that I decided to give it a try and I have fallen in love. I love every second of it and I really want to thank him for bugging me so much!”

A natural athlete who also doubles as a first baseman on the Wolf baseball squad (he also played for Coupeville’s state champion little league team), Norris is still learning the intricacies of the hard court game. While he expects to be used primarily as a doubles player this season, he would like to eventually see some time as a singles player, and is working hard to add new wrinkles to his game.

“I think I am good with volleys and up close with the net because of my reaction time,” Norris said. “I need to work on my backhand and work on getting different types of spin on the ball.”

Away from the court, his interests range from watching modern classics like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Forrest Gump” to working as a “professional ice cream scooper” at Kapaws Iskreme and pulling good grades in his favorite classes — history and German. An avid fan of travel, he is the founder of CHS’s new travel club, which is planning a possible trip to Costa Rica this year.

In the future, his travels may take him to other states for educational purposes, as he is interested in studying Industrial Engineering at Cal Poly. For now, though, he’ll stick close to home and be a key component of a Coupeville net squad which boasts its biggest roster in years at 20 players deep.

“We are a young team,” Norris said. “I think we have about 6-10 freshmen coming, so we have a lot of raw talent that will make us a force to be reckoned with when they are upperclassmen.”