Junior Robert Marohn shifts his weight from his right foot to his left, apprehensively waiting for the opposing team to serve the ball over net.  His doubles partner, junior Simon Kim, does the same behind him.  It’s a great day to play tennis, with the temperature in the high 70s, and a slight wind coming in from the west.  Today’s the Sectional Tennis Meet at New Trier, and Kim and Marohn are facing Notre Dame High School’s best doubles team.

Marohn takes in deep, drawn out breaths of air, keeping constant composure, crouching with both hands on his racket, ready to receive the serve.  The Notre Dame server knows the Wolves’ team, and you can tell from his heavy stance that he’s not optimistic about his team’s chances.  Knowing what he’s getting himself into, he tosses the ball up into the air ever so slightly, and strikes it before it has a chance to fall beneath his shoulders. He’s served it with the intention of it being out of Marohn’s reach, but it was a futile attempt, as Robert hits it back towards his opponent with nearly twice the force of the serve.

 While it’s a hit of monstrous strength, it’s rage is far from unbridled, as it’s aimed towards the back corner of the court, and hits its target with inches to spare.  With this, the opening point belongs to the Wolves, and the Notre Dame Dons know that they have quite a team on their hands.

Minority Report happens to be his first of two films of the day, as he moves on to his honors U.S. History class with Mr. Edwards, but not before picking up his newest English book, Heart of Darkness, from the bookstore.  After ascending the main stairway to the third floor, he encounters senior Casey Mahoney-Muno, who shows him the bad case of sunburn he acquired at the Six Flags trip.  Upon seeing one of his friends a few seconds later, he jokingly says “Ya seen Casey’s sunburn?  Rub his shoulders!”Right after setting his backpack down by his seat in the back row of his class, Marohn goes to the front of the room and doodles a picture of Edwards’ bald, bearded, and bespectacled head on the whiteboard, joining a number of other drawings of the history teacher’s mug.  Here, like his last class, they’re watching a film, but this time, it’s on the importance of the year 1968, the year of both the MLK and Robert Kennedy assassinations, on American History.Near the end of the class period, when Edwards asks for someone to run down to his office to collect DBQs, nearly everyone’s hand shoots up, including Robert’s, but alas, he isn’t chosen.  Despite writing the DBQ the night before, he ended up with a fairly good grade, what luck.  As the bell rings, Marohn walks out with juniors Heasu Kim and Mike Gonzalez, Robert’s spouse on Facebook.The trio seems to be partaking in an uneventful walk one second, but the next, Marohn and Gonzalez are engaged in a tickle-match to the death, much to Kim’s amusement.  Just as soon as it began, the tickle fight is broken up by their divergence of paths, as Marohn heads to homeroom lunch.  He grabs a seat at a table on the lighted side of the cafeteria with juniors Ridge Navaro and Jonas Malabunga.Marohn grabs a chicken sandwich and fries and eats while discussing Marohn’s adventures in skating and the Ultimate Frisbee club.  As the conversation dies down, Marohn breaks the silence by making a beat by banging his wrists on the lunchroom table, and Navaro is quick to join in.  Since it’s homeroom lunch, the period ends as quickly as it begins, but Marohn has lunch fourth period, too.  Normally, he’d head off to Orchestra, but they’ve had their last concert of the year, so he’s allowed to stick around in the lunchroom.Opting to move to a table on the other side of the cafeteria, he takes a seat with juniors A.J. Jilo and Michelle Martinez.  After making plans to hang out with Jilo after sectionals, Robert pulls out a green apple the size of his head (exaggeration, but it was pretty big), astonishing his entire table.  Jilo and Marohn then proceed to Instagram multiple photos of it, including pictures comparing it to a normal sized apple.  Still, with all the hoopla surrounding the apple, Marohn doesn’t eat it, and only continues to show it to his table.  After everyone’s done admiring his mammoth of a fruit, Marohn takes out a deck of cards and suggests a game of Egyptian Ratscrew.Marohn claims to have never lost a game, and by the way he dominates his lunch table, no one has reason to doubt him, although Jilo claims to have come close a few times.  Time and again, Marohn dominates the competition his table has to offer, and while he did fall behind in one game that he played, coming down to only a few cards, he pulled off a monstrous comeback, swiftly securing victory in a one on one against Jilo.

Marohn’s next class is Band with Mr. Koch, where he plays the tuba with “the world’s greatest” senior Alvin Lee and junior Francesca Aguila.  Music has been a huge part of Marohn’s life; he’s played tuba since 8th grade, and before that, he played the trumpet.  Aguila enjoys playing next to Marohn on a daily basis, saying that he brings a certain aloofness to band.

“He makes (band) a better experience for all of us.  He knows how to have fun and lighten up the mood, but he’s a great player, too.  He’s an integral part of the band.”

Before Koch quells the madness that is the band room during the limbo that is the time after the bell rings and before rehearsal begins, Marohn, like everyone else, tunes his instrument and plays excerpts from songs.  After Koch signals for the chaos of sound to cease, he goes over what they’ll be performing at the Lincolnwood Memorial Day parade, all while emphasizing the importance of the event.  The band has the honor of playing the official marches of the military every memorial day, and this year is no different.  They begin playing the marches of the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force.  While Marohn’s section hardly ever has the melody, the tubas are often looked upon as the backbone of the band, keeping everyone on beat.

As he walks out of the band room, just as suddenly as his ticklefest started, Marohn begins a short, impromptu freestyle rap battle with junior Libardo Coronado.  Now, Marohn’s school day is done, and after stopping by his locker to pick up his skateboard, he’s off to the varsity locker room to get ready for sectionals.  When he gets there, fellow varsity tennis players junior Jeremy Bergman and freshman Jesse Sacks are there to greet him, and the rest of the team soon follows.  After donning his red Niles West Tennis sweatshirt and gym shorts, he goes to practice his hitting with senior Ben Kramer in the fieldhouse, since they have two periods to kill before their head coach Andrew Suarez arrives.

There isn’t much conversation between Kramer and Marohn, other than the occasional “Nice!” or “Good shot,” but there are smiles all around.  At one point, Robert makes a save on the ball by bouncing it in between his legs, calling it a “Twinna” and saying that Kramer showed him how to do it.

“Roberts very outgoing, supportive, and enthusiastic when it comes to tennis.  He makes it fun for everyone.  He has all the great qualities of a leader, and he’s helped me a lot this year, with me being on varsity as a freshman and all” says Sacks of his fellow varsity player. Inevitably, they both get bored hitting, so they join the rest of the team in the pool hallway, but not before stopping by the trainers to pick up some of those highly addicting gatorade chews.  He sits on the bench closest to the pool locker room, listening to Das Racist, M83, Danny Brown, and Hudson Mohawk on his ipod, shooting a water bottle cap around with Bergman, and later, he gets up to wrestle senior Vinay Vellookunnel, who’s emerging from his gym class.  By the end of 8th period, Suarez arrives and the team hops on the bus to New Trier.

***

[singlepic id=3774 w=320 h=240 float=right]Marohn and Kim dominate on all sides of the court against the Dons, forcing them to run to the ends of the Earth for the ball, only to be called back to retrieve it again.  Their doubles team has been great all season, and today is no exception.  They easily advance past Notre Dame, but fall to New Trier’s best doubles team, barely missing a state qualification.  Even with the loss, Suarez speaks highly of Marohn.

“With three years on varsity, he’s very experienced, and he’s our best doubles player.  I can pair him with anyone on our team and it’ll instantly be a great team.  He’s definitely a happy-go-lucky kid, but when it’s time to focus, he’s as good as anyone.  We expect great things from him next year.”