[Young Drachma]

Game 2 of the season tomorrow, we're playing a 5A school from an hour away. They were 12-0 last year (including a 4-4 tiebreaker win over the eventual state champs) but the weirdness of the depth format meant that they didn't even place at state. I don't know why I thought they were middling, maybe because they were 5-5 two years ago...but this is a solid club that'll be a legitimate test.

They lost their best player, but it seems they have some solid players in the top singles and doubles roles, which means they're a good test for our ballclub.

Unusually, we have a common opponent too. Our season opener school has already played us both and we both won, but our opponents tomorrow beat them 6-2 and we won 5-3. This normally might mean something, but I feel like we should've won 7-1 had I been more attentive on the two matches we lost that I felt were winnable once we got our footing.

Still, this will be a good tune-up match heading into the spring break. I will admit that I expect us to win; my prediction is that assuming nobody else is hurt heading into tomorrow (I'm missing half of 1st doubles) that we should be able to grab our wins in the lower doubles/singles positions, which would mean we'd only have to win at one of the upper doubles/singles spots to get our 5th.

It'll be a good test for us either way. I expect us to win and if we don't, it'll give me a lot of context for how to structure the lineup more, but I'll be very surprised.

On the bright side, I'm pretty excited about adding a bit of depth to the varsity lineup in the form of some athletes from other sports and while they won't help us in super competitive matches, they'll be very handy for those schools where I want to do some load management on the top varsity types.