|
Minor update to this during the off-week, I realized that we've added one more good player that wasn't listed in the season preview because I didn't know she existed.
Soccer Star is a 9th grader who apparently had tennis lessons in middle school. Her parents figured she'd come to tennis, play JV and hit a few times a week in-between her club soccer matches she's got. Instead, the JV coach pointed her out to me after a practice once (he's also a pro soccer coach and the assistant at our school) and told me she had good strokes and might help us out.
So I told her immediately to come practice with varsity, as I do with promising JV players. After 5 minutes at practice, the entire team was looking at me like "where did you get her? And you know she's not leaving us, right?"
Her club soccer schedule means she can only practice with us 1-2 times per week, but she's a hard-worker who has incredible strokes for someone who doesn't play regularly. Given our depth, I can have her playing 2nd or 3rd doubles without any issues and it'll give her a chance to work out the bugs, get some confidence playing matches and it shores up our lineup even more.
One of the juniors was part of an all-volleyball girl doubles duo for us last year, mostly played 4th doubles. Their chemistry alone, coupled with athleticism and net skills meant that they were really competitive. That match last year (the one with the weird court) at the barn was the one where they flat out told me "Coach, you should let us play 1st doubles tomorrow because we'll win."
I legitimately wouldn't have done that had they not had the confidence to say that. And you know what? They teamed up to beat a doubles team that ended up placing 4th at Districts later in the year.
Anyway, half of that duo is an elite volleyball player and while I still have her penciled in at 4th doubles...she's not going to be able to play more than half a season for us this year because she plays club volleyball (and is a D1 commit, officially as of last week) so getting this Soccer Star in tow is really going to shore up our depth.
As it stands right now, with my D1 volleyball player and one of my freshman who are promising but needs a bit of work, we've got 14 players for 12 spots. Given the way these kids are overcommitted, you can't expect we're going to have a ton of matches where everyone is there at the same time. So the depth is especially helpful.
Our league isn't very good, so I use the opportunities to get kids more reps, but I also like to put them in other spots. So giving those underclassmen who play doubles a chance to lead the team in key singles spots is always great confidence boosts, because anytime the kids win all the time without a challenge it's hard to learn from that when you need to turn up the heat a bit come tournament time.
As for the schedule, I'm for sure getting a 5A match at an undetermined date. I did send an email to coaches who are hosting a Saturday tournament 1.5 hours away from here. It's 3 public schools from other parts of Oregon. We're deeper than any of those teams, but each has at least one good singles player including the best (4A) player in the state, so if we could get down there it'd be nice to get some reps, but I doubt they'll invite us this late in the game.
I also sent last-ditch emails to coaches at a 6A powerhouse that seemed to have open spots on their schedule to see if they'd want to play us. They're going to win their league and their #1 player almost came to our school but opted to go the public school instead. She's better than my #1 player, which is great to get her matches that get her out of her comfort zone, but outside of their Top 2 players, the rest of that team is takeable and we'll beat them.
I doubt these schools will write back or accept a match -- it's not usual that bigger schools will play down out here unless there's a preexisting relationship -- but I'm hoping for the long shot, because it'd be nice for us to mix up the schedule with some pressure-filled matches that aren't our rival.
|