Who is on my team?
Not gonna use names, but I'll just talk about the players.
My No 1 and 2 are two of the best juniors in their class in the entire state/region. Both have the
talent to play D1 tennis, but because tennis mostly draws from foreign countries, the threshold for an American HS player to get a schollie from a top program means you really have to get your rating up.
I love explaining tennis ranking weirdness to people, because it's not like other sports. Tennis has a whole parallel circuit of junior events that happen from kids as young as 7 years old and you can play them pretty much until you're old. There's no AAU in tennis, since it's not a team sport.
Old timers in here may remember
NTRP, a self-rating system that tennis players can use to self-assess their skill level. That has mostly fallen out of vogue now. Most competitive juniors rate themselves using something called
UTR which purports to do a better job of matching skill levels.
For context, the top college players right now have a UTR of around 10. My two best players are somewhere in the 6 range, but are both juniors. If they managed to get into the 8 range, they'd be low-end D1 players. It's pretty cool and not an everyday thing at all.
We have another player around a 5. The rest of the team are your standard high school tennis players.
Because we're not a 6A school (Oregon has 6 classes, but only 3 for tennis) we end up playing a lot of schools who just aren't as deep as we are talentwise at tennis. It's frustrating, but it's just how it is.
There's no state tournament this year, either. So we're even more limited in terms of motivational tactics. I'm hoping that a district title, coupled with maybe some battles against 6A schools will keep my good players motivated enough to keep playing high school tennis.
Because that's the other thing. Unlike other sports (besides maybe soccer & golf to a different extent) the best players in tennis often will eschew HS tennis entirely because it stunts their development. I give my best players a bit more latitude than you'd normally give kids at that level, because I think it's good for my regular players to get the experience to work with players at that talent level even if it's only once a week.
We have 6 seniors, all of them are varying degrees of doubles players. One is our 4th best player who plays 1st doubles, the rest are solid. We got a really good group of sophomores who are angling to take those spots, which is great because we needed that infusion of talent to help us win a title
next year, though I wish we had the chance to do it now.
There's also one other underclassmen who is somewhere between my top 3 who has opted out of HS tennis (she's a 10th grader) and I've tried each year to convince her to play so far. We'll see if next year is successful, because with her, we're an even scarier team.
Anyway, the rising class of sophomores and the extent seniors has created a bit of a lineup dilemma. Tennis lineups are more art than science, you do need to put your best players at the top of the lineup. Our league requires your 4 best players to playing 1/2 singles and 1st doubles, which is constraining, but also a bit sporting.
We don't have a problem doing that with our depth. When we're playing a team without much talent, I will often flex the lineup though and use bottom of the roster players. It's great experience for them down the road and it's also just a better experience for the kids. Plus, too many boring matches and my best players might decide it's not worth it for them.
Anyway, let's get into the schedule:
Match 1: We traveled down to Salem to play a catholic school. They only had 8 players, so they were forfeiting 2 spots from the start. The match was not challenge, but still good to be on the court. Their No. 1 player was a converted volleyball player who got really good at pushing, so she ended up being my 3rd doubles player (a senior) in that spot. It was probably a nice thing for them, as that team needed that shot in that arm.
We win 7-1 and start the year 1-0.
Game 2: Rivalry day came early. I was not happy to face them so early in the season, mostly because I usually have a month to figure out lineups, but this season I had a week to do pre-season and figure it all out. Our 2nd best player wasn't yet eligible to play (needed 5 days of practice) so I had to sit her out reluctantly.
Nonetheless, I setup our lineup thinking that if folks played to their potential -- and not knowing the full depth of my opponents lower singles/doubles players that we could take them out in a close one.
It was indeed a nailbiter that took over 4 hours. We won swiftly at 1st and 3rd singles. 4th singles I took a flier on a freshman in her first-ever match and she comported herself well, but lost in straight sets.
2nd singles, my senior co-captain and doubles star (3rd in the state 3 years ago) had to play singles to give us a legit chance at a tie. She was nervous because she doesn't play singles much. She won the first set, but then the wheels fell off and she lost 6-4 3-6 1-6.
1st doubles were facing the defending state champs at doubles. I knew it was gonna be a tough match for them, but I still put them out there (our 2nd doubles team who I bumped up for the occasion) because they're seniors and it was a bit of lineup protection against my younger players. They lost swiftly 1-6 0-6.
2nd doubles was actually closer than I expected, we put a sophomore newbie with another senior captain and they lost 4-6, 3-6.
My plan along was to hope our doubles depth would win the day. It did, ultimately. 3rd doubles comprised of two sophs who will eventually be singles players full-time won handily (6-1, 6-0) and then it came down to 4th doubles who had to win to get us the tie. They did not make it easy.
After going up 3-0, they ended up down 4-3, but recovered and won the 1st set 7-5. 2nd set was also a topsy turvey affair, but they managed to finish the opponents off and closed them out 7-5 in the 2nd set.
That win gave us the tie, but more importantly, the set tiebreaker win. We finished with 9 sets won, the rivals only had 8. Final game score was 72-70, us. We are now 2-0, going into a stretch where we play the bottom of the conference.
Our next four matches (including 2 home games against a team with a tiny roster) should be non-challenges. We did find out yesterday, that there's going to be a district tournament. It means we need to actually use our whole lineup in matches so that I can argue for seeds for our best players in that tournament.
Why is seeding important? Because otherwise, a good player can get up getting a shitty draw against one of the top players in the bracket in the 1st round when they'd otherwise win through to the quarterfinals.
In a normal year, the top 4 finishers in singles/doubles at districts, qualify for state. This year, there won't be a state tournament. (Lame) So instead, it'll just be for bragging rights. There are trophies for both the regular season title and for the district championship, so there is at least
something to play for, but it's just disappointing that the best 2-year stretch in program history will likely result in no state championship at all.
Whatever. We have a match today against a public school who have already forfeited because they only have 5 players. We're still gonna play the match -- it's good experience for the kids -- but it's a relief knowing we're already 3-0 on the year.
Thursday will be the first time this year we'll play with almost our full traditional lineup (minus two doubles players) so I'm looking forward to seeing how we perform in that situation, mostly because it'll put the rest of the state on notice that they dodged a bullet.