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Back to Oregon, a brief update.
I've complained on previous pages surely about our regular season schedule and how generally unchallenging it's been since I've been at the helm. Part of that is just the nature of our club -- I had some top-level players -- and the depth made it hard for other schools besides our rivals.
Well, I noticed our rival school had already loaded their schedule meaning the season schedule was out. Historically, our ADs wouldn't load ours until much later. Being proactive this year, I asked them to send it to me -- so I could do it myself.
The AD in charge of tennis for the "conference" (there isn't a real conference for 4A/3A/2A/1A tennis, just a loose regional amalgamation of schools that get mixed up every 4 years...) send us the schedule and it had both the actual "league" schedule which is a straight up round robin, but then there was a second "non-conference" version of the league schedule.
I'm not sure why they do this, but essentially he said those secondary matches (That start during the pre-season and end before the league schedule starts in mid-April) were optional and either school could contact the other to decide if they were gonna play it or not.
This breakthrough is quite huge for me, because for years, I've been subjected to playing some of the league's worse teams twice in a year -- often traveling quite far distances to do so -- for games that don't challenge my squad and don't get us ready for state.
The reason for it is simple. It's very difficult to schedule 6A and 5A schools when you're a 4A-1A school in tennis here. I suspect basketball and other sports also have this issue outside of traditional rivals, but in tennis, it would seem like coaches would value an opportunity to challenge their kids against a school that's 6A quality without having it cost them anything but a match date.
That is not how these folks think, while I did get a few coaches willing to bite on a last-minute match with me last year (but only one actually worked out) it seems nobody is jumping at the chance to play a competitive game on the girls side that isn't a peer 6A school.
So having an optional non-conference schedule of league matches just ensures everybody can get at least 12-14 matches (16 is the limit) in over the year. I've noticed our rivals would always opt out of a few of these games, but no one ever told me why this was possible. But now I know.
So with that information, I started redoubling my efforts to get additional matches for our non-conference slate. I doubt I can fill the entire thing with non-conference teams just because of how few seem inclined to play us, but...the fact that it's a possibility really excites me.
Today, I was able to schedule our biggest catch yet. Washington is still only a 4-class state (like Oregon used to be before they moved to 6 for no good reason) and the 4A state champs are just over the border. (The 2A champs are too, for that matter...)
I reached out to see if they'd play us and they responded and immediately said yes. I'm giving up a home game to do it, but the reason my top doubles team lost at State last year was just because they hadn't been tested all year really.
This year's team won't be as strong as last year's by any stretch, there are a ton of unknowns -- we have the gift of depth -- and I'd just like to get them some good experience. It's a lot more interesting than an "undefeated" season. Washington apparently plays 3 singles / 3 doubles, so we'll have to see how they want to play our match....but I don't really care. Just testing my kids would be so so good for us.
I have inquires out with a bunch of other 6A schools, we'll see what happens with those, but...I think no matter what it'll the strongest schedule we've ever had.
It might be better in some ways that we're playing that schedule this coming year -- last year's team would have beaten all but a handful of teams state wide -- because this team needs to stretch itself and level up before we hit the league slate of matches.
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