Sweat Socks: RL HS Coaching Tennis Dynasty

[Young Drachma]

Today's rescheduled road match officially cancelled, due to weather.

Means that we're League Champions for the third consecutive season.

We play again tomorrow and supposed to play Friday but Friday's match weather looks equally grim. I found us a contingency match on Thursday against another team that are also undefeated, but only if it rains and they can't play; because we have the indoor courts we could host it.

Unlike the other 6A matches I was trying to get and didn't get, this one is less about bragging rights -- I assume we'll win -- and more about giving our team a look against a quality team outside of our district but in our region. I'm going to make sure the girls are extra nice and we'll keep it chill because if it does end up happening, it's going to be this team's senior day that got rained out.

So I think honestly setting the tone of the match being a "match-like practice or a match-like scrimmage" rather than "BIG IMPLICATIONS" would be good.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Congrats champs

[Breeze]

Awesome - 3 in row. Now on to the playoffs!

[Young Drachma]

We had our last league match (probably, assuming Friday rain) yesterday. We were short-handed by our standards, missing 5 players who've been started for most of the year. Thankfully, the past few weeks we've identified some JV players who are good enough to fill the gaps and thus, it gives me a surplus of players to choose from.

Still, we made some last minute adjustments to the doubles lineup yesterday based on the Districts playoffs lineup. Still, it went fine.

We beat the 3rd best team in our (not especially great this year) league/district 8-0 (we won 7-1 last week) by fortifying the 3rd doubles spot we lost, sweeping them in singles despite using 2 JVers turned varsity in 3/4 singles. The biggest surprise was one of my emergent lower doubles players who has turned into a potential singles asset breaking through at 2nd singles winning a 3rd setter 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (1) it was not the prettiest victory but the point was...she overcame the odds and finished the job.

The best part of yesterday though was 4th doubles: Because we were kind of short-handed and our stalwart senior 4th doubles player couldn't play last minute, we pressed our manager into action on the way to the bus lol along with a newly promoted junior hadn't played for us before that Friday match last week.

She has very unorthodox strokes and hasn't practiced with us, but after she dominated with her friend last week, she earned her away onto the backup varsity roster and in this match where I had zero expectations they'd win -- I was very content yesterday for everyone to have their worst match, so long as we won 5-3 -- instead, that team comprised of JV player and our manager did the opposite. After dropping the first set 4-6 (and they were up briefly 4-3) they came back to win the second set 6-3 and then claimed the 3rd set handily 6-4. I was in no way expecting this and I'm still amazed they pulled it off.

It's a credit to our manager that she's gone from being a bit of an on-court liability, but better than a forfeit, to turning herself into "the anchor from which we will use to win a 4th doubles match" against a team that's actually really solid and even has a full JV program. So like...even though this wasn't their full-strength top-to-bottom roster, it was still a very solid team they beat.

Anyway, that might be it for the regular season. Tomorrow we have that potential rainy day match against a team that I expect after today will also be 13-0. So it'll be a real barn burner and a way to end the regular season.

I have absolutely zero interest in playing on Friday for a rubber match against the league's 4th best team (who do have a likely seeded player at 1-singles...but we have the 4 best singles players in the district, so it's moot)

As for tomorrow's likely match, I have no idea what to benchmark them as. I do know that they've taken their 1-2 singles players and moved them to 1st doubles in anticipation of the state tournament at 6A (a common tactic here among programs that don't have singles players strong enough to go far in the state tournament) and so I imagine they will be solid.

Our 1st doubles pairing have played together most of the year and this team only started pairing up yesterday, so they'll have 2 days of practice. Also, our 1st doubles team yesterday looked better than I'd ever seen them before yesterday. Just crisp and their timing was really really good.

Singles-wise, they've already taken their best singles players and put them at doubles which means...it should be a clean sweep, especially if -- as expected -- my 1-2 combo decide they're both going to play.

The real wildcard here, will be seeing how talented their doubles depth is. I anticipate these will be slightly better players at 2nd/3rd/4th doubles than we've seen all year and I won't have my regular 2nd doubles pairing.

I do not envision a scenario we'll lose this match, we're just too strong. But I'm curious if it'll be a 7-1/8-0 blowout or if we'll sweat this one out a bit more. Either way, I'm thrilled we get to it. These kinds of ad-hoc matches never happen here, much less between two of the Top 10 teams in the state regardless of classification, this late in the season.

[Young Drachma]

So today was stupid because we were missing 6 from the lineup. Two were for legitimate injuries, but we don't have that kind of depth especially against a 6A team.

Still, the girls were extremely resilient. We were missing 4 of our best 5 players, but our true 1 and 4 showed up to play singles which make sure it wasn't a total bloodbath.

We won 3 singles matches, but lost 4th singles (despite some grit and fight from one of recent JV promotees) and then all of the doubles teams lost. The 1st doubles pairing (right now our 3rd doubles team) were also putting up a lot of fight, but they literally played the 1-2 players from that team who were paired up at 1st doubles. Our net play was stellar, but we just didn't have the length to finish that match.

So we lost 5-3 overall (50-35) because we just played 8-game pro sets. I'm annoyed at the girls essentially thinking that someone else would pick up the Slack and that we'd be okay. Also, I got us this match as a showcase match and so many kids flaking was annoying because we wouldn't have played it had I realized I'd have JV kids getting destroyed and stuff.

The positives were way bigger though. First, it establishes that even with half our roster missing we're more than comfortably a 6A team. Like there's just no way we had any business being in this match and we were really my 4th singles player figuring it out away from us clinching the tie.

Anyway, regular season is done. District tournament is Monday. I am going to make one adjustment -- a sophomore who I thought wasn't going to play is going to in the last singles spot for us -- because the 9th grader I was going to play there didn't show up today, the sophomore did and I think she's better anyway. There's just no way the 9th grader would've put up the fight that she did and that convinced me to change my idea.

Lastly, the other team's coach offered that we could just call this a scrimmage rather than an actual match at the very end. I said if we split we could list it because we both stay unbeaten, but otherwise, I'd take her up on that. It wasn't really a good representation of our season nor our whole team. Like yeah they beat us, but if you saw the players that played, anybody who saw the lineup would know you didn't actually play the "real" team.

They essentially beat our JV team and 3rd doubles pairing, but lost to our 1st and 3rd singles and half our 2nd doubles squad. Still, I'm going to use this as motivation next season for the girls and not let them claim anymore undefeated stuff, because besides the 12 that showed up today, nobody else had the grit to care enough to play.

But I'm letting it go, we'll start districts and it's a good lesson for me next season and for coaching broadly.

[Young Drachma]

District tournament seeding yesterday. I should've fought harder to make sure my 2nd doubles team was in the Top 4. Per usual, our rival's coach used her influence to make sure both my players got absurdly tough matches and everyone went along with it because they let her do what she wants.

I should've raised a bigger stink, but 1) I would've lost and 2) there's no guarantee that my kids would've gotten better matchups.

Good news
#1 team is top seed. Our #3 doubles team got a really good draw against a very weak 3-seed that were seeded too high, but we preferenced 1st doubles teams over 2nd doubles teams. Assuming they can win a 2nd round match against that team, they'll have a cakewalk to the semis where they'd likely meet our top-seeded doubles team.

On the singles end, our best player is the obvious 1-seed. Our 2nd best player despite barely playing singles was boosted ahead of the kid I actually advocated to be a 4-seed because everyone is afraid to play her. I knew there was no way I could fight it, because the coaches were all acting in their own self-interest; rather than fairness.

But she'll cruise to the finals now because at least with a late swap, they moved her out of the quadrant with my #1 singles player and instead forcing her to play the 2-seed who she'll destroy. So a small salve to the situation.

Bad news

My 2nd doubles team get a quarterfinal matchup against the 2-seeds. This was a mistake on my part, I should've fought this harder and I didn't. The rival school's coach's logic was that her 2nd doubles pairing now has a girl who mostly played 1st doubles and so it was fairer for them to be a 4-seed rather than the 5. I should've fought this, because we never got a chance to play them together.

But even had I fought, the other coaches do whatever she tells them and I wouldn't have had enough support without pretty much blowing up the whole process and so...it wasn't worth it even though it's super unfair.

Bad News #2 My 5-seed (3rd singles player) ends up getting stuck on the 7th seeds place because you can't meet your own partner until the semis. She gets an unfair quarterfinal match against the 3-seed, which they mostly setup because everyone is ducking my #2 singles player who is going D1.

The only reason I didn't freak out about this is 1) I expected this to happen and 2) I think my girl (who is a very composed pusher who frustrates everyone she plays and is 18-0 in her HS career) will be a bad matchup for this girl from the other school. They've never played before, but the would-be quarterfinals opponent is only a 4 UTR. She's a very big hitter, but doesn't have much precision and she lacks composure. She thinks she's better than she is, so she's very mistake prone.

Best of all, they've never really scouted my singles player and so...it's going to probably be the toughest match she's played in HS -- just given the stakes -- but I think that provided she can play her game and once she gets a lead, it's going to be wrap for that other girl.

It makes me happy that I scheduled that 6A last week as a pre-state warmup because if she does win, it'll be because she played that girl at 2-singles last week. That match was against a big hitter who she actually was down 2-1 at first, before coming back and figuring it out and winning 8-3.


So in general, the bracket did not shape up well for us despite having the better players and it's possible if things went badly we'd only qualify 4 players (2 singles & 1 doubles team) to state. In most years, getting 4 would be a really good outcome. The last time they won state (in 2016) they only qualified with 4 players.

That said, it would happen if my players literally forget how to play tennis. Parents have been texting me today saying they were at the clubs this weekend hitting, my 2nd doubles team worked with a pro yesterday and others were playing today and looked good.

My expected best case scenario after tomorrow? I think the 3rd singles girl figures out the puzzle of that 3-seed girl and ends up winning. I think the 3rd doubles team will demolish that weak 3-seed because the anchor of that team is a D1 volleyball commit who is AMAZING at the net.

They almost beat the 1-doubles team they played last week from that 6A school, but those players just had huge serves and too much pace for them to keep up with. The team they'll play in the 2nd round will have NONE of this.

As for my 2nd doubles pairing, I have devised a gameplan for them. The other key component in that match is that 2-seed have only played doubles together once this year. They're not a good doubles pairing and so, I think if my girls -- who have played together since March -- are on their game, it's very possible for them to get ahead. As singles players, that other team are both hot-heads who hate playing from behind, get frustrated and rush things.

So I'm banking on frustrating tennis being the key of the day to keep them out of state. It'll be truly the most rewarding moment of my career if we can find a way to solve that puzzle...

Also, I've submitted my resignation already. The kids don't know it yet, but I'm not coming back next season. So this is our swan song.

If I had to guess, I think we'll end up with 7 going to state. 2 doubles teams and 3 singles players. That 2nd doubles team are the wild card....because getting 9 would be absolutely bonkers, but doable.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

because besides the 12 that showed up today, nobody else had the grit to care enough to play.

This is the part that boggles me, just tbh.

I'll spare you (and everybody) the rant because my bullet points are likely pretty obvious anyway ... but damned if I can get my head around how some people are wired.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

This is the part that boggles me, just tbh.

I'll spare you (and everybody) the rant because my bullet points are likely pretty obvious anyway ... but damned if I can get my head around how some people are wired.

I think it's a combo of generational coupled with the way this school works & the kids its attracts. I give them a lot of latitude and it works, but I sort of expected naively that they'd sort of just gear up and "protect the house" when the alarm gets signaled and instead these parents don't make them do that...so the kids feel pretty empowered to be like "I have other stuff going on..." and I just don't think that would've flown in bygone eras.

Still, the sliver lining in that situation is that I got to give my 3rd doubles team a really tough match that wouldn't have happened for them otherwise & my 4th singles girl played the match that made me bring her to districts today...and that turned out to be a really smart choice, so even though it was stupid...

I feel like 1) getting rid of that win streak before next year was good, it was going to be an albatross of their necks for no real good reason and create undue pressure when they didn't need it -- regular season tennis here isn't that important -- 2) with our full lineup we'd have beaten that school 7-1 or 8-0 and it wouldn't have been a flex.

[Breeze]

Good Luck!

[Young Drachma]

Last year at districts, I was pleased when all but one of our players made it out of the first round. There was no state tournament last year, but we would've had 4 players make state (2 singles players, one doubles team) and we had 3 quarter-flnalists in singles.

This year, when the stakes were the highest this team orbited into another level. All but one of our players made the quarterfinals this year. The one girl that lost was on JV until 2.5 weeks ago, we inserted her into our last singles spot on our district roster and she almost upset the 6-seed before losing 5-7, 6-4, 6-7.

For context, everyone who makes the semis get to go to state. We submit 4 singles & 4 doubles entries into the district bracket. So out of our 12 kids in the bracket, 11 were a match away from going to state. I've been telling the team all year that "I want us to play like it's possible for us to take all 12 of us to state." And we almost did it.

Some notes:



- We've already clinched another district title -- our 3rd straight -- dating back to 2019. They've never won it this decisively though. We were a shitty doubles seeding job away from having 3 doubles teams heading to state.

- The quarter-final match between my 3rd singles player and the 4th best player in the league/conference/district was must-see TV. Mostly because this was a mix of contrasting styles. The 3-seed was a big-hitting freshman who is very good, but is she not as good as she thinks she is. The prototypical tennis headcase. My player? Composed all the time. Rarely makes errors. Can hit with pace, will hit crafty shots and can hang with a big hitter by just being consistent and forcing them to be precise and hit winners. My girl won 6-2, 6-3. She only trailed once, down 1-2 in the 1st set. During the changeover she said "I dunno, it doesn't look good." And I said "you just broke her, she's up a game and she's already negative self-talking.

What's gonna happen if you get a lead? Just strap in, frustrate her and see where it goes." My girl won 5 straight games to win that set & kept the car running through the 2nd set. It was a masterful performance and I'm extremely proud.

This is just a background aside...

Spoiler

What's satisfying about this matchup is that part of the fraud that was the seeding process was our rival school's coach deliberately violating the league rules on seeding, so that they could avoid my 2nd best player (who is going D1) and so...the school (not the rival) who had this 3-seed thought that playing my 3rd best player was going to be a cakewalk. They'd never played her before at 1-singles, so they'd not paid much mind to her...too busy being in awe of my top roster players.

What's funny is, my strategic decision to forfeit last Friday against this team was prescient. It should've just been rained out, but at the behest of their coach, they rented an indoor bubble so that we could play out the match on Friday instead of cancelling it. I think they wanted one more crack at our players before the district tournament, mostly for scouting purposes.

I do not think they assumed they'd play the girl they played yesterday, but rather, they wanted to scout my top players to see if there would be an angle for beating them, because they thought delusionally that she had a chance to do that.

I didn't have enough players on Friday because I didn't think we'd play the match. Forfeiting sucks, but...it was a strategic choice because I knew why they wanted to play it -- there'd have been no point, we beat them 8-0 with our full lineup and they only got 15 points on us total -- and I didn't want my kids playing a match the Friday before a tournament.

- To further illustrate the shitty bracketing job, the quarterfinals featured my 5th seeded 2nd doubles team playing the top seed. She did this mostly by insisting her 2nd doubles team be seeded over ours due to skill level. I shouldn't have let it fly, but...there was a hole in the bracket where my 3rd doubles team (a senior/junior combo) had an easy 2nd round match against a weak 3-seed from a different school.

I didn't want to blow up the bracket because I thought that worst case scenario we'd end up with 2 doubles teams at state which was always my plan and if we got lucky, the 2nd doubles duo (9th/10th grader) would pull off a big upset and we'd have 3.

Ultimately, it played out like I imagined it would. The youngsters did lose, but they fought hard and were composed. The other thing is...I think getting punched in the mouth like this is going to make them want it even more. Both of them have been splitting their time between tennis and something else this season -- one of them is on the track team at the same time -- and so I felt like it's come pretty easy for them all year & in a weird way, this experience will make them so much more resilient given they have two more years together as a doubles duo. They'll make state next year for sure; it's just a matter of seeing how far they can go.

Wednesday is the semis & finals. We have 3/4ths of the singles entries, my 1-2 combo will meet in the finals, just like they did their 9th grade year. I have actually never had to watch them play each other & I'm not that excited about it, but...it'll be better than an opposing player being in that match.

In the 3rd place match, I'm hoping my soft-hitter can work up her same magic against a less talented player than the one she beat in the quarters. The girl she'll face in that match won't be as much of a headcase, but she's also not as big a hitter. The first two times my girl has played people like this she's caught them off guard, I'm wondering this time if the lack of element of surprise will cause the other player to be more ready.

In the doubles deal, we'll have our top-seed because they'll beat our surprise team. Then it'll just be a matter of seeing if our girls can pull another big against our rival's top doubles team.

They did it two weeks ago, but the rival's coach pulled out all the stops including 1) stacking her doubles lineup and conceding singles, essentially and 2) rigging the bracketing to ensure she was guaranteed (essentially) two doubles teams at state.

I did learn a lesson about speaking up better though and I'll be more prepared for something like this in the future, though at this point, I'm pretty sure I'm not coming back next season. So this is the last ride.

Honestly, I don't have any major complaints. I'd prefer to win the doubles title at districts so my team is ensured the top seed, but it's not the end of the world if they're the 2-seed. I'm just trying to get to state and finish the job. We're not the Warriors and there's no hanging a banner for a 13-2 season and a district title if we don't win it all, so we have to finish the job in a week.

[Young Drachma]

We won the state title yesterday. We ended up with one point short of tying the girls state record for points at state. I forgot I didn't update the districts list, we ultimately qualified 7 players to state -- a team record. I was named district coach of the year, too. Which is pretty wild.

Our top doubles team was upset in the quarterfinals by a team that was scrappy and disruptive. Our girls unfortunately played their worst tennis of the year. Still they're be back another year.

We ended up with a state finalist, two semi-finalists, 4 quarterfinalists and our 2nd doubles qualifiers lost in the first round before winning the consolation bracket.

It was fairly anti-climactic heading into the last day, as we'd already sewn up the state title (thankfully) thanks to an upset that happened in the 1st round to our rivals, otherwise...they could have made it interesting.

Next season if I were to do it, would be super interesting. Without the big 3, it'll be up to the players left to figure out how to fill the gaps. I think they can do it, but it'll be a huge difference than what we've had the past few years. Maybe easier in some ways at least to build a team, but I'm not worried about that right now.

[Breeze]

I missed this update...came here wondering why I hadn't heard anything. Congrats! That's awesome. Was a fun ride following along and getting a title at the end was really cool.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I read but failed to post.

Congratulations are an understatement.

A most enjoyable ride, and I thank you for taking us along.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Breeze

I missed this update...came here wondering why I hadn't heard anything. Congrats! That's awesome. Was a fun ride following along and getting a title at the end was really cool.

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I read but failed to post.

Congratulations are an understatement.

A most enjoyable ride, and I thank you for taking us along.

Thanks to both of you for being consistent readers, I didn't set this thing up thinking there was any way it'd end like this -- with a state championship -- but it's a pretty cool story arc now that it's over.

[Breeze]

Let us know where the girls sign to play in college if you can.

[Young Drachma]

Also, I know I said I wouldn't be back next season, but I changed my mind during the state tournament and talking to the AD. It felt a little unfair to my impending seniors to bail and also, I just wanted to see how we'd do with one more year under our belts.

On paper, you'd expect us to be a lot worse because we're losing our top 3 singles players, but it's not quite true.

I'm going to take half of our top double steam and she'll play 1-singles. She had enough talent this year to be a state semi-finalist in singles -- I almost had her play singles before we decided the doubles route, which was smarter in the end -- and we apparently have an 8th grader who is supposed to be as good as my 3rd singles player this year. She's seen her play before and said she's better than her...but I'll have to see it for myself.

Still, as a 9th grader I don't even need her to be that good just good enough to compete consistently.

With the two top singles spots pretty much fleshed out, we'd just have to figure out our doubles pairings. I'd take the last two doubles state qualifiers from this year and pair them together, they'd get along great, both are super competitive and I feel like over a whole season they'd gel pretty well.

Our super duo at 2nd doubles (11th / 10th) will come back a year wiser and more experienced and with the talent to make a run at state this time, hopefully hungrier after getting close to making state this past year.

That means I get to construct two strong doubles teams from the ten kids that I have left from this year's roster not listed above AND not counting any of the depth players who will show up the first week of practice/tryouts.

We've never done tryouts my previous 3 years, usually I would just bring the existing varsity kids with me and then kids who thought they could hang would come practice with varsity and either stick or not. That led to kids who were better than I realized being stuck on JV for too long and previously, JV never played a real schedule because our league doesn't have many programs who have big enough squads for JV schedules.

(In other states I've lived in, JV just plays after varsity...but here, it rarely happens that way. Only once since I've been head coach have we done that.)

This upcoming year, I'm going to give JV their own schedule entirely. It's going to be way more like "Varsity 2" when I coached in Colorado, where those teams would play small school varsity programs and JV teams of big schools. Even though we're small, the reason we've been successful since I took over is giving the developmental players a chance to play matches against good competition.

There are lots of schools in the area for them to play, which is nice. Conversely, I'll also make them play a few of the varsity matches that we usually hate playing against the bottom dwellers in our league. Hilariously, we've been accused for the past few years of bringing our JV to matches when that's not true.

This coming year? We'll for sure be doing that for the road swings of a few of these matches. We'll fill in their schedule with a few JV2 programs of big schools, a few JV programs where I think they can be competitive and maybe even a stray 6A or 5A varsity bottom-feeder, but I'll have to be tactical about that because nobody likes their varsity losing to your JV.

Every year I've coached, we've had 40+ girls to start the year and so I assume that we'll get those numbers again. Only half the kids that come out for JV want to play competitively, the rest are generally content to just play practice games and have fun. I'd hate to lose that, but I think the next evolution of having a full 2nd squad will be good for us.

There's a pathway to winning state again for us, but it's going to be strengthening our doubles pairings so we can get two state seeds in doubles & then having a singles player who can go far too.

Obviously, you never know what players are going to show up at the other schools, but...our depth is our advantage so that even if there's a strong singles player or two, it won't be enough to override.

Lastly, I'll be way less precious about trying to keep a perfect record as I had been the past year; the win streak was kind of fun for us...but losing that 6A match (albeit in the dumbest way) and then being charged with that regular season forfeit (it was strategic and ultimately, the right decision) was nice because now I don't have to go into next season worried about maintaining it.

The Oregon HS format is always dumbotown, because you can lose all your regular season matches but win the district title and state by having a few good players. But I'm going to revert back to my original thinking around treating the regular season as a series of practice matches that get us ready for Districts.

The other thing about having the two teams is that it frees us from what we ran into two seasons ago where I had a bunch of sophomores who were geared up to play and practice, with a bunch of seniors who expected to be on varsity. It allows me to ramp those younger players up in due course and grow their confidence, without throwing away players who have been reliable for us the past few years.

One of the things I don't talk about enough in this dynasty is how much I've grown as a coach in the past few years. You have to learn how to manage your personnel, but also how you approach each year with kids. You tighten stuff up, get a little better at personnel management, but also decide culturally what kind of program you've developing.

I feel like going into Year 5 of my varsity coaching situation -- 4 with this program -- I get to a much better sense of how I'm doing this. The one thing I'm missing is other coaches to lean on that aren't local. I might visit my old camp this summer and see if I can spend a day or two shadowing and picking up new drills. Because I don't coach for a living, you kind of get stale with stuff year to year.

I feel like I was way more prepared this year than I was last year for the job, and I'll surely go into next year a lot more poised to navigate things. Also, I'm probably less inclined to flirt with another 6A job (though the public school by my house would be tempting...I don't have the energy to start over with new kids until at least I graduate this group of seniors..) and that'll make things easier because the past two years I wasn't 100% sure I'd come back.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Glad you're returning, selfishly since I'm always entertained by the compare/contrast of Oregon vs Georgia.

The insights about your own coaching journey reminded me of something that was oft discussed about the fairly long tenured coach that was at Will's school for a number of years. His primary responsibility for perennial contender(s) (coached boys & girls), honestly, was making sure transportation was handled on match day. And #2 on his list was determining where the team would eat on the return trip for away matches.

The other thing that stood out to me was the enormous difference in numbers, shockingly so given the ... haphazard? random? whatever word? nature of HS tennis there.

I reviewed my mental math with Will just to be sure: yes, you have more girls each season than the combined boys & girls varsity AND JV at his school. Now granted (if I've done the classification / school size research correctly) you're roughly double the size of his school so it kinda makes sense but even at schools twice your size I don't think they're getting past your numbers.

Sidebar: HS numbers are down in Georgia generally, since the top players rarely play HS tennis (similar to baseball, softball in a lot of places, etc). Less than 1/3rd of the top girls tennis recruits in this 4-year cycles are playing HS, or even attending a traditional HS. They're either in full-time academies or part-time with homeschooling (something I didn't realize until diving into it deeper today and discussing with the kid, etc). And zero of them are in a public HS here.

Anyhow, I'm staying on board for the another lap, looking forward to it.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Glad you're returning, selfishly since I'm always entertained by the compare/contrast of Oregon vs Georgia.

The insights about your own coaching journey reminded me of something that was oft discussed about the fairly long tenured coach that was at Will's school for a number of years. His primary responsibility for perennial contender(s) (coached boys & girls), honestly, was making sure transportation was handled on match day. And #2 on his list was determining where the team would eat on the return trip for away matches.

The other thing that stood out to me was the enormous difference in numbers, shockingly so given the ... haphazard? random? whatever word? nature of HS tennis there.

I reviewed my mental math with Will just to be sure: yes, you have more girls each season than the combined boys & girls varsity AND JV at his school. Now granted (if I've done the classification / school size research correctly) you're roughly double the size of his school so it kinda makes sense but even at schools twice your size I don't think they're getting past your numbers.

Sidebar: HS numbers are down in Georgia generally, since the top players rarely play HS tennis (similar to baseball, softball in a lot of places, etc). Less than 1/3rd of the top girls tennis recruits in this 4-year cycles are playing HS, or even attending a traditional HS. They're either in full-time academies or part-time with homeschooling (something I didn't realize until diving into it deeper today and discussing with the kid, etc). And zero of them are in a public HS here.

Anyhow, I'm staying on board for the another lap, looking forward to it.

I suspect our numbers are compounded by several things 1) we don't have a softball team and 2) it leaves a lot of athletes who are good at other sports, but not college-level (nor club) looking for something to stay busy with in the spring.

Because like your kid's school I presume, it's an expensive private school -- and in our case, the only non-sectarian elite private school in Oregon -- we have a lot of private club kids who grow up around tennis courts by proxy and a bunch of parents who also play, which leads our girls to get coaxed to pick up rackets.

I think it's also quite social for our program, though there's a clear demarcation line between the viably talented kids and the ones that are less so.

I understand the no-cut policy thing in practice, it sounds good for ADs, but in practice they don't support no-cut programs that aren't football/basketball the same way. If tennis had the infrastructure of JV matches (Colorado does this extremely well) that other sports did, you'd be able to keep more kids around.

But tennis is weird because of the whole raft of junior events that one can play from such a young age, that high school tennis is a bizarre exercise for elite kids, unless it's an area that has a lot of talented players all playing HS too.

I laughed at the coach's responsibility bit you mentioned, that's important stuff -- but yeah...with kids that are getting coached, it's a fine line between not wanting to wreck their games. For me, I know my limitations and so I just try to get between the ears of the really good ones and help them stay within themselves and with the non-year round players you have a lot more latitude to help them focus and try to dredge skills that can help.

[Young Drachma]

In a fit of hilarity, I wondered what it'd be like to coach a fall team. So the folks who know I once lived in Wyoming for years...well I came back to coach there. I had a work reason to come back for a few weeks, but mostly, it's a super short tennis season -- 5 weeks in total -- and I ended up taking over the state's winningest tennis program.

The quirks are plentiful:

- The format is 5 matches (2 singles / 3 doubles)
- You coach boys & girls at the same time, they travel together but play separate matches (there's no mixed doubles like Texas)
- Regular season only impacts Regionals seeding. Regionals positioning impacts state seeding. Everyone goes to state, only 16 schools in the state play tennis
- It's a flighted state tournament, so there is a team champion for boys & girls and then there are 8 individual state champions (1/2 singles 1/2/3 doubles) every year too.
- The state tournament is double elimination for everyone, so once you lose, you get worked back into the bracket for another matches depending on where you lost (even semi-finalists losers play it out for 3rd place, but there's no 5th place match.)
- State Team Title is based on where you finished in each flight's bracket.

Naturally, there are absurdly long road trips and we have 3 instances where we play 2 matches on a Saturday against far-away schools.

Regionals are a 5 hour drive and state is in the northeast corner of the state and what's worse is, they split it among 4 different sites meaning you might have a kid playing for a title somewhere and you can't physically be in two places at once. It's bananas.

I have one assistant coach, in theory, I'll get another one in time for the post-season. There's a ton of parent support for the program -- I think at least 70 people showed up for the season opener including parents from the other school -- and needless to say, this was very weird to me having coached in Oregon (or even playing D3 or NJ HS tennis) where you might get a handful of people attending games.

We won our season opener against one of the other local high schools, this weekend we get both Casper schools, their main HS are the defending state champions. The boys team is diminished and have already lost once this year, their girls team are still firing on all cylinders as they only lost their best player.

Our team only has 3 varsity returners on the boys side that finished 7th in the state last year, the girls team brought back just two players from a team that finished 3rd last year after a run of 4 straight state titles.

I am the 3rd head coach in 3 years though (much like I was in Oregon) so that's made things interesting. The sheer number of kids and the fact that I have to also coach JV here is also for sure way different than Oregon and so it's a lot of trial by firehose for the pre-season.

Lastly, it's wild because the boys team players 5 through 12 are basically all able to beat up on each other at any given time. So running challenges between them is tough because you end up in a situation where you only know they can win a singles match, but not sure if they're a solid doubles pairing. So I'm trying to speed up the process of getting a 3rd doubles pairing over there.

Same deal on the girls side, though they're not nearly as deep after their 10th player, so it's a bit simpler for me to figure out.

A far cry from Oregon where the kids mostly trusted me to make the lineup and after a few games of making pretty bad ones, I got my bearings and we won 22 straight. Here way more people are invested in what I'm doing with the lineups, ladders and so forth. It's pretty exhausting and I can understand why they've had a hard time keeping coaches, because it's just a lot of really supportive folks who are also super invested, but it's kind of difficult to suss out.

If the girls finish anything less than 2nd, it'll be disappointing to me. I think they're still figuring themselves out, but if I can unlock the self belief and they start playing well on a roll through Regionals, we'll be in good shape.

I think the boys just getting on the podium at all (Top 4) would be a coup, this team hasn't won a state title since 2018 and the girls have mostly been the standard bearers for the program over the last decade, even though the boys still have one more state title (17) than the girls do (16), I really think it's doable.

For context, the girls lost 3 times last year and the boys only lost twice. The format of having the Regional tournament being high-stakes I think gets in their heads and how stuff gets a little weird for them. I feel like that's where my coaching really shines, but I'll need them to buy what I'm selling if that's going to work out and it's still too early for me to tell whether they do or not.

Prepping practices is kind of impossible and like I'm still doing my real job during all this, so needless to say...I probably should've found a better mid-life crisis outlet. Jokes aside, it's generally made me a better coach already because the Oregon crew really bought into what I was selling and this year it did not take us long at all to get right into things.

But this crew will never miss matches, I don't have to convince anyone to come to practice and it feels way more like coaching a "real sport" than tennis has ever felt anywhere else I've been.

I'll probably check in again in a few weeks rather than do the game-by-game style we did for Oregon, mostly because this situation is a lot more fluid and I'll have a better story to tell after the next week of matches (2 this weekend, 2 next week)

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

.

Sidebar: HS numbers are down in Georgia generally, since the top players rarely play HS tennis (similar to baseball, softball in a lot of places, etc). Less than 1/3rd of the top girls tennis recruits in this 4-year cycles are playing HS, or even attending a traditional HS. They're either in full-time academies or part-time with homeschooling (something I didn't realize until diving into it deeper today and discussing with the kid, etc). And zero of them are in a public HS here.

Anyhow, I'm staying on board for the another lap, looking forward to it.

Oh and on this, I think Georgia just has a lot more access to world-class coaching than we have in Oregon. Our best players have to go to California to get that and because none of them live there, there's a ceiling. You still some really good players come out of the state, I think they mostly play high school tennis because parents can't take the time to travel them around the country to tournaments and at the 6A level at least, you're still getting access to some of the best players in the state, so it's like a free USTA Level 4 tournament at the top tiers.

But yeah, generally speaking the sport just doesn't have the resonance that other sports do in the state and only about 5000 kids played it this year. Oregon is essentially more like Idaho/Montana/Wyoming in terms of its tennis because of the sheer size of the state versus bigger states.

Like everything, coaching these days doesn't have the same returns it used to have. The money isn't great, it's a massive time suck and obviously tennis pros usually don't want to spend the time doing it because they can make more coaching private and for non-tennis pros like me...if you're not just a labor of love gym rat (or have a coaching playing it) then it's kind of a lot of hassle.

I never understood why so many retirees were doing it when I was a kid, but now I get it, having done this for 5 straight seasons (and having signed up for one last ride next year with the girls in Oregon again)

[Young Drachma]

Season report

The thing about a 5-week tennis season is you have to change up everything you normally do. I'm used to having a lot more runway and seeing opponents from the conference twice. Here, you just don't get that opportunity.

The other thing is, I've had to recalibrate my expectations and coaching to players who are kind of all coming up through the same system -- or in most cases, don't play but for a few months out of the way -- which changes how you can communicate with them about adjustments.

This has been good for me as a coach. I wanted to do a clinic or something, but as all-compassing this is with super long days and coaching two teams without another on-court assistant, I'm starting to hit my stride and I think I've figured out an approach to get us through the rest of the season.

We only have two regular season weeks left. Next week, we travel 4 hours away to play 3 matches over two days. Then the following week, we'll play 4 matches in 5 days including a Saturday doubleheader to end the regular season.

We lost yesterday to another Southern conference team that might be a rival for a state title for us, but I will say that much like I assumed before I got here, the levels in talent are so razor thin among the best players that you're really just trying to deal with temperament and mindset more than anything.

The mistakes the kids make between here and Oregon aren't that different, but I will say that you can't be as sloppy in Oregon -- even in 4A -- and expect to be able to consistent put up a positive result as you can here, which is an opportunity.

After yesterday's loss, I realized that we need to reframe the entire way we practice and prepare them for regionals and state by working on how we approach games and matches. There's not really enough time to change their strokes, so all you can really fix are positioning (to the extent that it takes) and most of all, their approach to shot selection.

I've been joking that coaching a 5-week season with two teams is a really nice way to pad your career record, because if the team is any good you can win a lot quickly over the course of a season.

Realistically, the boys finishing Top 4 in the state this year after finishing 7th would be huge. I think we can really aim for Top 3 and if things break our way, contend for a (shared) state title or something crazy.

Girls side, anything besides a Top 3 would be a disappointment. The difference is both rosters are totally new kids, only 3 of the 8 boys starters played varsity last year. On the girls side, only 2 of them are returners. They'll only lose one varsity boy (who is a fringe starter) and the girls will lose one starter who has had injury issues and went from 2nd singles to 2nd doubles, so...with the core intact and the recruits impending, the girls will be excellently positioned next year.

I think finishing the year strong and seeing what breaks there are will be super interesting for me, coming from a totally different model, here's a flighted state tournament so all the positions (1/2 singles 1/2/3/ doubles) crown their own state champion, in addition to the team champ.

I don't like this model because it makes kids want to get preferential roles so they can say they were a state champion, even if they weren't good enough to play top positions. In that way, I favor Oregon's model better. Wyoming doesn't have enough teams for a team state tournament like I'd prefer, and if it did, 100% there'd be massive cheating and stacking because sports are too cutthroat here and like what would be the point with so few teams anyway?

So the format of flighting it (like Colorado does and likely where they copied it) makes some sense.

[JonInMiddleGA]

random comments, etc, covering all of the Wyoming posts

-- Never heard of flighting ANYTHING at the high school level, so that's definitely different.

-- the 2/3 format is at least more recognizable to me, since Georgia is 3 singles/2 doubles

-- never knew anybody did mixed doubles in HS either

-- seeding in Wyoming is similar to GA too -- regular season only impact region seeding. But here, the state tournament is strictly by the numbers (8 regions, 1-4 (south) and 5-8 (north) always pair up within their subset, rotating the first round pairing each year

-- re: your margin between players 5-12 ... that's somewhat similar to what we experienced in HS (varies by program of course) but once the top 7 were set pre-season, rarely did it change. Was like pulling teeth to get a ladder match and if you weren't top 7 in week one, your varsity hopes were pretty much done (aside from a pity appearance in a lopsided affair or something)

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

random comments, etc, covering all of the Wyoming posts

-- Never heard of flighting ANYTHING at the high school level, so that's definitely different.

-- the 2/3 format is at least more recognizable to me, since Georgia is 3 singles/2 doubles

-- never knew anybody did mixed doubles in HS either

-- seeding in Wyoming is similar to GA too -- regular season only impact region seeding. But here, the state tournament is strictly by the numbers (8 regions, 1-4 (south) and 5-8 (north) always pair up within their subset, rotating the first round pairing each year

-- re: your margin between players 5-12 ... that's somewhat similar to what we experienced in HS (varies by program of course) but once the top 7 were set pre-season, rarely did it change. Was like pulling teeth to get a ladder match and if you weren't top 7 in week one, your varsity hopes were pretty much done (aside from a pity appearance in a lopsided affair or something)

Yeah, we don't do any ladder matches in Oregon either. I thought I would when I took over the team, but with so many roster spots and really only 1/2 and doubles mattering, the kids mostly mellow out and the parents don't bother me there at all.

New Jersey is 3/2 as well, so I'm used to just 5 matches. It's nicer than Oregon only in that I can hope to win 3 matches and we win, versus having to win 5 of 8 or if there's a threat of a tie, then you have to start doing math on whether you win the set or games tiebreaker. (I've only had 2 ties in 4 years of Oregon coaches tho...once at the public school and once at my private.)

The biggest difference here is the lack of access to coaches, it's super hard to find people to do it. Parents will volunteer but that causes issues if it's a kid you don't want to start on varsity, so it leaves you with a very small bucket and then it get super political based on geographic boundaries.

I can't fathom doing this again, but were I to do it, I'd have to tap my own network to get a young assistant or two who'd come in for at least the regular season or maybe just the last few weeks between Regionals and state to get them touched up. It's just a ridiculously hard job with only one on-court coach.

[Young Drachma]

This week is state, every team qualifies all their players which in a state with no tennis courts, mad bussing shortages and erratic weather seems like a really bad idea. Nonetheless, the seed is based on how you did in the Regionals and you get matched against the lower seed from the other conference, at each flighted position.

Our girls are setup well to finish as high as second, first seems hard to imagine because the defending champs brought back their whole roster minus one kid, but...we'll just have to see how it plays out.

Boys goal is to get on the podium at state, last year they finished 7th but we might have the best 2nd singles player in the state after I had my 1-2 players share the 1 singles job on the boys side for half the year. It seems to have benefited the #2 kid a lot because he's playing better than I've seen him and he's truly handling these dudes. Our first doubles team is also super good and 1st singles is a grinder who is just a sophomore. If either of our 2/3 doubles teams can figure out how to get us at least 4th place, we should be able to score enough points to make a Top 4 finish plausible, maybe even 3rd but there's a lot of depth on the boys side this year.

Girls won the Regional (and Conference) Championship, with all 5 of our entries making the finals (and 3 of them winning) this was the 9th time the program has won a Conference/Regional title, but they didn't last year and this roster is almost entirely new (save for 1 singles and one of the doubles players) though we were helped considerably by our rival & the best team in the Region last year losing whatever talent they had and us being able to reload and get kids in the right spots.

If I do anything fairly well as a high school coach, it's being willing to futz with lineups and to give enough kids opportunities which ends up being a strength, whereas most coaches will keep their lineup static.

Boys finished 3rd in the region.

The boys finished the regular season 9-3, the Girls ended the year 8-4.

I've learned a lot doing this gig, though and I'm curious to see how it all ends up.

[Young Drachma]

I'm for sure not going back -- I resigned already -- but I forgot to sew that thing up.

Girls finished 3rd in the state (there are only 16 teams statewide, 4 get a trophy) and were 7 points off second. A flu-bug not COVID swept through the team the last two weeks of the season, the fact we managed to escape Regionals without any sickness forfeits was impressive, so getting to the State tournament I knew we'd be a MASH unit and we were. The fact that the first day was also the absolutely worst weather of the year -- around 40 degrees, rainy, windy and cold -- did not help our situation at all.

Both my seeded girls doubles teams (1 & 2) lost in the first round. There's a back-bracket at state where you can work your way to play for 3rd, but neither contended and that's where our missing points were for making it to 2nd place.

3rd doubles lost in the 3rd place match. On the bright side, our top singles girl avenged an earlier loss to a tough pusher from up North and made the state final for the first time in her career. (She was a state champ in 1st doubles her freshman year, and 3rd place last year after losing in the semis) and she lost to a nemesis who just has a more complete game, still getting there was really the triumph.

2nd singles had been dominant all year - I think she gave up like 9 games the whole year - and she went to state and got stung by a bee in the state final lol. She felt fine, wasn't allergic and I think won 6-3, 6-1 or something like that to win her first-ever state title (as a freshman) and gave me my first-ever individual state champion, which was a pretty cool distinction given I'm never going back there to coach again.

Boys finished 7th for the 2nd straight year, but this time, we had three entries playing on the last day, the 2nd and 3rd doubles teams, as well as 2nd singles -- who I swapped players out of on the last day of the regular season -- both made the 3rd place matches for their respective positions. All of them lost and finished 4th but the fact that we had an outside chance of placing on the boys side had we finished the job was completely crazy given that this was supposed to be a rebuilding year.

In the end, I learned a lot and I think if I were ever to take over a new program in another state someday after one more season in Oregon this spring, I would know how to approach the gig now in a way that I wouldn't have before. I also know what questions to ask an AD before accepting a tennis gig in ways that I didn't before this and my first program, because the incessant parent meddling was a new phenomenon to me generally and given the stakes -- I could have left at any point and it wouldn't have mattered to my life much at all -- it was for sure not worth it.

I got some good tactical knowledge out of the experience too; dealing with lower-level players that by the nature of the location end up being consider "among the best" was super jarring at first. I have doubles players here who probably would win a state championship in singles out there, without much of an issue. The highest UTR boy in the state is maybe a 7, the girls state champion is a 5.

That said, I'm glad it's over. The state is absurdly too big for all the travel and it really tested me, the entire experience did. I'm proud of how it turned out, but also glad they're going to find someone local.

Next post will be about the team you've actually been following this whole time, but I suppose the best part of this story being a dynasty is like my summer was me doing a one-time save in FM in some random part of the world.

[Breeze]

Thanks for wrapping up, I was curious how things went. Nice run!

[Young Drachma]

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.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

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.

Good move where it's an option IMO.

There's a pretty regular opponent for "us" up in South Carolina -- similar school, similar tennis program -- that's frequently on the schedule as a road trip. They play a different format too so it's a chance to break up the routine and give players a different experience.

[Young Drachma]

My biggest coup yet, I got us invited to a 6A tournament. They've been asking for years if we could get to an overnight invitational tournament, but there aren't very many in the state for girls teams (there's really only 1 or 2 for boys teams tbh) and we normally wouldn't be invited because we're small.

But I reached out to a coach that runs on that has attracted some of the best teams in the state historically -- though not always -- but always 6A programs to see if they were interested in having us and they said they would. So that's good be awesome for the team. It's also a H2H format, so it means we'll get at least 3 matches over the 2 days.

I have no idea how competitive we're going to be this year -- I can speculate, but I'd rather not jinx it -- but coming off two years where we were 22-1 (with individual match records of 145-24) I know we won't be as *dominant* as we'd been, even if I expect us to still contend for another state title so long as we can shore us our singles situation.

We have 2 match dates left on the calendar that I can still fill, nobody is getting back to me about filling them -- not surprised I guess -- but part of that might just be that it's nearing the holidays and people aren't thinking about tennis season right now.

We'll see, but no matter what we already will play a tougher schedule than we ever have and that part really excites me.

[Breeze]

very cool. can't hurt, the more tournament experience the better.

[thealmighty]

Hopefully the teams are really good. You don't get better, or learn your weaknesses, by playing inferior talent all the time.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by thealmighty

Hopefully the teams are really good. You don't get better, or learn your weaknesses, by playing inferior talent all the time.

That's precisely why I worked to get us into a big school tournament. One of the other 3 schools playing we actually played last year, we were competitive with them using only a few varsity, so I imagine with our whole team -- even though we're not as strong as last year -- we should be okay. Our regular season schedule is this way, so we've struggled to turn things up if we get into a jam, but no matter how good these teams are -- and I expect that WA State Champ to be extremely competitive -- they'll be a nice shift from playing our normal schedule as we've done every year since I've had this gig.

The other two public schools I don't know much about, but the main difference here between the 6A level and sub-6A is really about depth. Those teams might not be as technically proficient as we are, they'll rarely have club players (outside of the top teams) but your garden variety HS team here will still have a bunch of really scrappy athletes at every position.

So we can't steamroll them. If hadn't worked so hard on building our depth the past few years, there's no real way we'd be able to play these schools because we have a massive dropoff from our last viable varsity player to our JV, whereas a lot of these 6A schools will have a JV team that's competent and the best ones even have a JV2 team, we'll just never have that kind of depth at our school unless we started getting a glut of tennis players showing up.

[Young Drachma]

The new season is here. We're a few days into practice and it's going to be an interesting year.

As I anticipated, my putative best player (if you've been following along the one who played 1st doubles last year and who I had to recruit to get to play for us in her junior year) isn't sure she's gonna play HS tennis for senior year.

My 2nd doubles team who I was excited about, one of half of them split between us and track and she's gonna mostly prioritize track this year and her doubles partner is injured.

My freshman class has 3 legit talents, two of whom who could take over the 1/2 singles mantle from the outset. I'm less concerned about the regular season, and i'm more interested in strategizing a lineup that'll get us the best chance to sneak a title at state. With that #1 player still around out east, the singles title is really for 2nd place.

Two semi-finalists in double and a singles semi-finalist would be enough for us to win state. I think we have enough pieces to wield together two strong doubles teams from among the players we have left. One of the freshman phenoms could play singles and so long as I could get them seeded would be a state qualifer too.

The real outlier is seeing what other teams have reloaded with. We'll get a lot of reps and with our extremely tough schedule this year, at least these kids will be battle tested no matter what happens. It'll be weirder than we're used to, because we've never lost a match with full strength since I've been coach and I think getting them over the idea that "losing a match" means something will be interesting.

We still have another 7 days of practice before our first regular season match, I'm glad I got us two March matches this year, because it would have been super frustrating to wait until April and playing our normal league schedule wouldn't have sussed out for us how good we really are.

[Breeze]

looking forward to this.

[Young Drachma]

I've got a provisional lineup ready to go for our game next Tuesday. Even if she decides to come back, our top player isn't eligible until she's practiced more anyway. I'm 50/50 on whether she's decides to play, but I gave her an ultimatum to tell me this week if she's in or out. I'm pretty chill generally, but I just don't want to set the tone for my hot shot 9th graders that it's okay to be half-in/half-out on the team. Not having her will make repeating harder and it'll also make those travel tournaments tougher, but on the flip side...getting these kids to step up won't hurt.

Conversely, we can withstand the waiting until April when the real core matches start, so it's not a huge deal right now. I'm happy to get the freshman acclimated to high school tennis.

I also found out one of the new league teams isn't playing a varsity schedule meaning in theory I have another open date I can try to go get us a match against somebody, but I'm not sure if I can get anyone to bite that I haven't already reached out to.

Even when the coaches agree, their ADs will veto because I guess these dudes don't like losing to a small school? I have no idea, it's very silly.

Anyway, lineup wise we won't get a true test of our situation until we play that state champ from Washington state the 2nd week of April. We do play a home/home against a league opponent the first week of April that ought to be a bit of a test in the singles department, but the real question is how much did the rest of the league reload this off-season?

Lineup-wise, I feel pretty okay with our situation. My two freshman will comprise the 1/2 singles spots, replacing what we lost and I think I called them "Dime-store" versions of what we lost, which is better than I'd hoped for.

One of the other 9th graders is good enough to play one of the top doubles spots. Realistically, even if we don't repeat this year, my goal is to win the District again at minimum. Given all of our league competitors had more spots to replace than we did, and I still bring back my senior core, we have one more year of roster depth to make another run at a title.

The thing we lack this year that we've had the past two years though is extended depth. In the past, I could go 15-18 deep on varsity, meaning I had kids way off the roster who could fill in for us as needed. Right now, I'm using that depth thanks to my senior, a core junior opting for another spring sport & losing my hot-shot sophomore from last year to an injury.

It's not a huge issue right now, you can win state with 4 good players...but I won't be comfortable with that little margin for error. Plus, I just want to capitalize on what I suspect (hope?) will be one more down year for the league before I lose all my depth and we have to legitimately rebuild next year.

[Young Drachma]

Match 1 is out of the way and we won 5-3 (75-41) in a match where our depth bailed us out, despite what looks close. Our two freshman playing 1 and 2 singles were beaten by two opposing players who made state last year (including the 4th place finisher) and she's improved since we last saw her.

Our 2nd doubles team (half with a 9th grader also) fell short 4-6, 4-6 but it was a winnable match against a team that just gave them junk to hit and they could never get ahead.

I think this kind of thing will be the song and dance of our year, tho I do expect the freshman to settle down as the season goes on, opening day is not something I overreact to. Heck, last year we "only" won 6-2 against a middling 6A opponent which turned out to be our closest match of the year until the last one.

This is a different team than the steam engine I was piloted the past few years, and I kinda prefer it, in the sense that I know I have more influence across this lineup than I might have in past years.

The 2nd singles girl was down 2-5 in the 2nd set after losing the first and I hung out and watched it play out as she inched back to 5-5, with her serving to go up a break. She had it too but then I think the nerves got to her and she started pressing and ended up falling 5-7, but her composure to keep fighting and to be willing to adapt was comforting. (she was baselining a lot, refused to come to the net until we talked through it...and when she did, got better results, even though it's not the strongest part of her game.)


Anyway, a W is a W.

[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.

[Young Drachma]

We lost our first match of the year, 6-2 against that 5A team. The nail in the coffin was when another varsity player turned up sick an hour before the match.

I just didn't have any other rabbits out of the hat. We had some major confidence issues today too, so the close matches that were close ended up not going our way. (Including a 3rd set tiebreak that ended 12-14)

I'm proud of the fight they put up and honestly, the reason I scheduled matches like this was precisely because last year at state those deer in the headlights looks when we faced any adversity made me realize we needed tougher non-conference matchups.

A perfect record when you don't really beat anybody or challenge yourself isn't that valuable. Even this 5A team we played went 12-0 last year, but didn't even place at state. This kind of match will be much better for us heading into 4A-1A state.

I did this knowing that it meant I'd need to get radical on tweaking the lineup, and I've got some good ideas for how we can adapt things moving into the league season in April.

It does mean those 6A events we've got planned are going to be a real experience builder for us, but honestly, at least this is interesting. Plus, playing these types of schools and not winning means they're more likely to schedule us again in the future, which I'm not sad about.

[Young Drachma]

Back from spring break and only match this week, a breezy 4-1 win over one of the (typically) better teams in the league. I've solidified our top singles team and they looked dominant against inferior competition. It started raining and hailing, one hour into the match but they have 7 courts and we managed to complete 5 of the 7 matches in that timeframe with us winning all but one of them.

We're using a sophomore at 1-singles and they were a bit overmatched today against easily the best player in the District (who lost to my 3-singles girl last year with a state bid on the line) but there's no one else really in her league save for whatever our rival decides to do at 1st singles.

Besides that, everything worked well with my lineup changes for league play and it was good to schedule these guys because I wanted to know if they'd potentially reloaded and it doesn't look like it.

Next week we scrimmage against the WA state champs, followed by matches against our rival and then a Thursday match against a newly added team to our league, the obvious real question is 1) can we hang with the WA state champs and 2) how much have our rivals reloaded with their new coach.

But today's performance confirmed my thoughts about our pathway to potentially running the District for at least this year.

[Young Drachma]

We lost our dual against the team from across the border. To be fair, when I scheduled that match, I thought I'd have 3 people who ended up not coming back from last season's team, I don't know if I'd have scheduled it not knowing that...but it was nice to take the trip and for us to play another competitive team.

Still, without them we comported ourselves pretty well. And my lineup emphasized our doubles pairings since I want them to get experience playing together against better competition, so we only won 1 of the 5 matches but 2nd doubles split sets and we didn't play out the 3rd set fully (10 pt tiebreaker) so I consider that a half win because it's two freshmen playing together for the first time against a team better than anything they'll see until state.

They responded well as a team to the upskill in competition for sure.

Today, we took on our rivals and I didn't expect to lose but I also wasn't sure how good their new players would be and how much their other kids improved.

We won 5-3, winning all the singles and 4th doubles. Our other doubles teams in losses all played competitively despite not having their best stuff at points. It's a lot of the early season stuff with positioning and mistakes, but like...nobody was out of any match 3 of the matches we lost featured tiebreakers (3rd doubles was a 6-7, 6-7 loss lol...)

Given this is the highwater mark for our league this year, I feel very good about it. The kids walked away pretty excited about the W, it was truly gutsy and it could have easily gone a different way, so I'm extremely jazzed that we managed it.

We play tomorrow and 3 times next week before that big 6A tournament. But this is one of those signature wins that sets the tone of the rest of the year and I'm frankly glad we got it out of the way.

[Young Drachma]

So we're still cruising in league play, things just aren't that interesting right now even compared to when I started, which is saying a lot.

So after we breezed through our 3 regular season league matches last week, we got up at 5am and headed 3 hours for this 6A/5A tournament with 13 other teams participating.

The original way it was setup when there were just 12 teams was nice, because we were basically in a World Cup group with 2 other teams and the two teams in our group we actually beat, so we'd have ended up playing a 6A powerhouse (a team that rarely loses and finished 2nd in the state last year in 6A) in the semi-finals, which made sense.

But instead, when they went to 14 teams they stuck us the "First Four" style part of the bracket against the host school who we dispatched easily 7-1, only to have to take on the 6A powerhouse in the quarterfinals, meaning lots of other schools that we would've beaten handily while still fresh on Day 1 managed to get further in the bracket, mostly because they probably assumed 3A school meant "not very good" despite not doing any research.

Anyway, we indeed lost to the 6A powerhouse 7-1, mostly as we emphasized our doubles pairings where we thought we'd have more success and I was mostly right. My all-freshman duo actually led in the first set 4-3 before their excitement got the best of them and they lost steam. But the real story is how my 3rd doubles team comprised of one half of my real 3rd doubles pairing (only because we're deep in doubles) and our sort of floating singles player teamed up to knock off this squad in straight sets.

For context, only 5 other schools in the last 4 years have gotten a match off the 6A powerhouse...and needless to say, all of them are other strong 6A powers, so for us to do it -- even if you'd call it a fluke -- is really wild.

Playing such a good team was so cool for my young team in many ways and I'm glad we got to do it, because I saw them happier after this LOSS than I've seen them after matches where we dominated and it validated my decision to really upgrade our schedule. Given how much work it took me to make that happen, I was really gratified about it.

In the end, we went 2-2 at this tournament knocking off 2 of the 6A opponents we faced and making it to the finals of silver bracket, where we lost narrowly to a 6A opponent after 1) we had to forfeit 4th singles because of an injury that happened in the previous match (which we won despite forfeiting a spot, thanks to clutch play from my 4th doubles pairing who were JV subs) and because it was our 7th match in 5 days (and 4th full match in 24 hours) I let the kids pretty much do whatever they wanted; pick your partner, don't play singles, whatever.

Had we played the real lineup, we'd have won...but by that last match, I told the kids there was no pressure and to treat it like practice. My goal is to win state, not 5th place at some 6A tournament where a bad bracketing job denied us a semi-finals spot, lol.

Anyway, it was a really really good experience even with my modest complaining because there simply never get opportunities like this and this the 2nd year in a row where we have -- by far -- the toughest non-conference schedule of any team not in 6A/5A and it's a tradition I intend to continue.

The regular season wanes on, we have 3 games this week and 3 next week before we're done for the year and head to the District playoffs.

We'll clinch our 4th straight league title with a win next Wednesday against our rivals who'll come to our court (assuming neither of us loses a league match between now and then...) and then we have a post-season tuneup match against a non-league opponent on the last day of the regular season next Friday.

I'm still finalizing our playoff lineup, but I feel pretty optimistic about our chances if things break well for us.

Also, I've been named State Coach of the Year for our classification and will get honored with the others in late May. Pretty wild story arc.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Nice, congrats.

[Young Drachma]

Regular season is complete and we end with another record breaking 15-3 regular season. Most thing I'm proud of is after we came back from that big school tournament, my wonder was whether the drop in competition would make us play worse and I sort of emphasized a need for us to keep up the intensity and beat the teams we're supposed to beat.

The squad responded and we didn't lose another match in the final two weeks of the season, going 6-0 including our regular season finale over a 5A team we added at the last minute, on "senior skip day" (day before prom) meaning that all but two of the seniors weren't able to play AND we had an underclassmen hurt for the season AND one of our key singles/doubles utility types also not available.

Somehow, our 4th doubles rotation team playing 2nd doubles were able to split sets against a 6A team and win a 10-point in lieu of 3rd set to capture us the outright win (otherwise it'd have been 4-4) and I was pretty pumped about their resilience, given we didn't sweep singles like I'd hoped we would (we won 3 of the 4 singles slate)

Districts are this week. We have 3 of our 4 doubles teams with seeds, which is about as good as we could hope for. Now they just have to do their part.

Singles will be more fraught, because we put essentially our Top 5 players in the doubles bracket (I still think the smartest strategy, just higher risk) and so while I was able to get our winningest singles player seeded (I've never seen a non- 1&2 singles player get a seed, so this was kinda big) they all have relatively tough draws to get to state. Doable for one of them to do it, but..they'll need to play well tomorrow and we'll just see how the cards play out.

Our injured sophomore would've done well in that bracket, but I'm glad it wasn't one of the integral members of a doubles pairing or something.

My greedy goal is getting 4 entries (a singles & 3 doubles) to state, because it'd maximize my strategy of getting points around the bracket. Bad scenario would be only getting 2 doubles teams and nobody else, but they're strong teams and would be seedable if it happened, so...we wouldn't be dead in the water.

I feel like that 6A tournament was a good indication of our resilience and historically we've over-performed at Districts in every year I've been the head coach, so I'm really hoping we can do it again. The singles bracket is weaker than it's ever been in the last 4 years, and it's also massive 40 entries in singles, 37 in doubles is almost twice the size of the bracket from when I first started this dynasty, but the league got bigger and now some teams have full rosters when they used to only have half teams.

We'll see how it plays out. I'm happy with our regular season, but I realize that my strategy will only pay off if we manage to finish the job. Singles would've been pretty simple and the freshman would've gained experience that paid off, fortunately, they're all pretty happy playing doubles & the parents are all on board with it too, which is why this has gone so smoothly this year by and large.

[Young Drachma]

As you can probably tell from my messages before this, I was second-guessing myself on the tactic I employed this year (over)emphasizing doubles. In the end, it was probably a balance of managing senior feelings (tm) coupled with giving people a semi-preference of teammate and also trying to ensure we were giving our best opportunities to win. One of the wild cards is that our rival's new coach is formidable and their team really leveled up in the past few weeks.

It's made it more clear to me I need a full-time assistant coach to work with me on the fine-tuning of our operation because we just aren't going to be able to keep up if we don't develop our talent.

At the end of the day, we didn't win the District title narrowly and finished 2nd after two of our doubles teams finished 2nd and 4th today. Our 3rd doubles entry lost to the 4-seeded 2nd doubles team from the rivals, meaning we both got 2 doubles teams to state, they got an additional singles player and we didn't, which might be tactical issue on my part...but I think I did the best with the information I was working with, and ultimately, the goal was able maximizing for a run at State.

I think reflecting back, I would not count points we haven't won, and when there's a chance to protect players at the top of the bracket, you have to take those opportunities rather than getting greedy, because there's probably a world where we could've still gotten two doubles teams to state and a singles player had I not insisted on the plan of going for 3 in doubles.

Nothing we can do about that now, though. We had 5 quarterfinalists, which in a year where the bracket was insanely big -- over 40 entries in each -- it was a lot harder to get to state this year than ever before, you had to win 3 or 4 matches whereas in past years you only had to win twice if you got a bye.

We'll see how State goes in a week. I think the key positive is that all 3 of our freshman phenoms will go to State as 9th graders and given that player development has been a big part of what I've tried to emphasize with this team, not overindexing on seniors and giving my underclassmen opportunities to develop happened a lot this year, in part out of necessity.

The other thing that threw a wrinkle into this year wasn't just losing 5 state qualifers from the state title team, but also having 3 returners not come back and a 4th get hurt before the post-season. Once I was able to put it into perspective, it changed how I viewed all of it.

So we'll be back to State in a week and after a day off this week, we'll get back into the lab and see if we can tighten up what we need to on this thing. There were some really bright spots throughout this event, even in the semi-final and finals that I think make me feel like it's great we get another crack at these teams if we play our cards right.

[Young Drachma]

State is over. The verdict: State Doubles Champions & 3rd place overall as a team.

A returning player who was part of the top-seeded doubles team in the State last year paired up with a freshman phenom who is probably our best player won the State Doubles Title yesterday, our school's first girls doubles title in 27 years and only the 2nd time it's been done.

I'd been aware of the "doubles curse" as I'd been calling it since I took the job, and I insisted we were going to get rid of it while I was still head coach. To do it in a "rebuilding year" is pretty wild.

In order to win it, we had to beat the defending state champs, the team we'd beaten 3 times last year, but had no luck against this year with this new pairing. There were signs of life later in the season, as my 2nd doubles team played them in Districts and lost, but were actually leading on them for half a match. The gameplan we employed with them was pretty much what I had the team do this time, but I also just kind of stayed out of the way and let them figure out the puzzle.

They won 6-1, 3-6, 6-1. The 2nd set we were up 3-2 but then lost the lead and it was worrying, but the mistakes were just tension and pressure, not a fundamental inability to play. The 10-minute break between sets was precisely what we needed to recompose them and they came out with a 3-0 lead in the first set, before dropping a game, but then that was it. At 4-1, 40-love, the opposing team called an injury timeout...but it didn't rattle my kids at all, the won the next point and the game and then closed out the match breaking the defending champs.

The fact that it was our stalwart Captain and our young riser playing their best tennis of the year for two days to get it done, was truly my favorite thing ever.

Winning State was always going to be tough, because you can't lose 5 starters to graduation and another 4 who were injured or didn't come back to tennis this year and expect to reload the way you need to. Our signature depth on our team had been an asset the past few years, but this year instead of being able to run 15-16 deep on varsity, we were pretty much only had 13 players.

Like I mentioned before, I think in a different scenario, I'd have emphasized getting a singles player to state in the hopes of helping us in the overall team points race, but I think the fact that I figured this out AND we had such a good season developing people makes me feel okay with how it all turned out.

A lot of kids got to test themselves in singles that wouldn't have in a different context, most of them are coming back next year too. Seniors got their appropriate swan songs, too.

The all-freshman doubles duo tumbled at State and lost both in the 1st round and in consolation. It was a bummer, because seriously for 6 weeks or so, they looked really good. They'll both learn from the experience, and I think retrospectively, I'd have split them up sooner because I knew from the outset that a freshman/freshman duo is one of those roller coasters that kinda only works when the two people are siblings or related.

Still, I got to use them in different contexts throughout the season, so I think I'll be able to maximize their talents next year just fine.

Winning the State doubles title vaulted us into sole possession of 3rd place as a team, a remarkable accomplishment with only one of our two entries earning us any points, even more ridiculous is that 1) if the defending state singles champ had lost to her opponent, we'd have tied for 2nd place 2) or if my other doubles team had even just won one match in the consolation round.

My captains and I agreed that this year's state doubles title/ finishing 3rd was more satisfying than winning State last year, even though that was awesome and felt a bit like a coronation for good our team had been during the COVID years, but were denied all but one opportunity to show it.

I think when I think of all of the ups and downs of this season, I reflect on how much I changed as a coach. The Wyoming experience really gave me a lot of appreciation for how good my situation here was and I came back renewed and excited to work with kids who seem to generally appreciate my style of coaching. I build more relationships with my own athletic staff; the boys coach -- a hall of famer in her own right -- has become someone I enjoy talking with and who was really helpful to us the day before we left for State.

It's extremely satisfying to think of all of the pieces that made this year work. The big school tournament; significantly beefing up our non-conference schedule; and even changing up the way we did pre-State practice prep where I made the practice schedule more diverse than our regular season situation, and I feel like all of this contributed to the mindset heading into the tournament.

The end of the season is always a bit of an exhale moment and this one feels especially that way. I'm glad I came back, I'd surely have wondered about them if I hadn't and there were so many good moments this year. After spending last year watching our boys team win the state doubles title (to clinch the state championship) it was hilarious and fitting that I got my own opportunity to win a state doubles title a year later.

Thanks for following all these years!

[Chas in Cinti]

Just completed my first season as an assistant coach for our girls team. First state qualifier (#1 Singles) since 2019, 1st Team Trophy (Regional Runner-Up) since 2019 and only 4th overall. It's been an amazing experience and we're already planning for next year!

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Chas in Cinti

Just completed my first season as an assistant coach for our girls team. First state qualifier (#1 Singles) since 2019, 1st Team Trophy (Regional Runner-Up) since 2019 and only 4th overall. It's been an amazing experience and we're already planning for next year!

That is super cool! Congrats to your and your squad! It can be a lot of fun.

[Young Drachma]

offseason notes

- I got us invited to the state's preeminent girls tennis team tournament next April. Much like last year's tournament, I'm less concerned about us going down there and winning a lot, and rather, giving the girls exposure to seeing much better teams.

We proved last year that we can pretty much hang with most 6A/5A programs, and this team is mostly that team minus all of our senior depth, I think we're going to be able to backfill most of those losses (there's no replacing our captain) but we're just going to struggle with depth. We haven't been able to convince any of the tall volleyball players to try tennis, it usually only worked a few years ago because they had friends on the team.

Tiebreakers
I was talking to someone about my team's record in tiebreakers, because I felt like we didn't lose them very much. I got curious -- and was waiting for my car during an oil change -- and went back and counted.

Counting all of my years coaching in the state (so 5 years)

Tiebreakers: 20-9
3 set matches: 26-14

When you break it down, the most impressive parts of those numbers are:

My current girls team in 4 years/3 seasons are 14-2 in tiebreakers. The two losses were 3rd set tiebreaker post-season losses (one in districts, one at state) and 15-10 in 3-set matches.


Not surprisingly, the 3-setters are almost always bottom of the lineup doubles pairings (3rd/4th doubles) though my first season our top doubles pairing had a penchant for dragging matches out and playing teams beneath them close.

The boys team I coached for one season went 4-10-1, but was somehow 11-4 in 3rd set matches. I'm extremely proud of that record, because we stole more than a few matches that way, and even in losses, had some where we managed to get closer than we had any business getting with that roster that I patched together with scotch tape.

Wyoming aftermath

The Wyoming team indeed got a local coach, a young guy who came over from another school from a different part of the state where he'd been an assistant coach. It'll be great for him and if he sticks with it, he'll end up a successful coach because he got a state champion in his first year on the job.

Girls won state, boys finished 2nd. We did a lot of harder work last year, and in the off-season, there were two parents who basically coached the team with the willing kids and they got themselves ready to go for the year.

There's no doubt having a local person who is in his 20s and had been in their situation before was probably very helpful for those kids (and probably the parents) and it probably helped too that we'd deal with all of the roster shenanigans during my time, so he didn't really have to do a lot with the lineup.

The only things I'll claim credit for are:

- Letting the 8th grade hotshots practice with varsity, all 3 made varsity as doubles players and 2 won state titles (the other one finished 3rd)

- The lineup was mostly already set for him, he didn't have to do much besides replace the seniors from last year with better 9th graders and made a few modest tweaks to the structure -- stuff we'd talked about doing at the end of last year anyway.

The Wyoming numbers for tiebreakers in one season aren't as good (4-11 in tiebreakers / 15-20 in 3-set matches) but that's because tennis there was so variable and it's overly skewed by the boys team playing in TWENTY NINE 3-set matches last year (girls were 3-3 in them), but I used a lot of the same methods...it's just harder until you know your kids to be able to drag them out of close matches with changeover coaching tbh. Same deal here though, 3rd doubles was often the culprit in playing crazy 3 setters. Not to mention that state uses ad-scoring for regular season matches, which is will never not be insane to me.

Also, I'd never dealt with coaching two teams at the same time and it's for sure a lot of context switching on the fly.

[Young Drachma]

Another season is nearly underway here in Oregon.

It's Year 5 with this program and we've got a lot of folks in new spots, given we graduated so many seniors last year. I wasn't sure how the team would look, but after two weeks of pre-season, it looks like I have a general lineup.

We've got 3 games next week, one that showed up last minute, and all of them are on the road -- we'll be on the road a lot this year -- but it'll be a good barometer for where we are heading into spring break.

[Chas in Cinti]

I'm in Y2 here in Kentucky... out team size has almost doubled (we had to cut girls for the first time in 8 years). We are deep, but young... we've maxed out our matches, and added 5 JV only matches just to get girls time. We're also travelling to 2 invitationals (one in KY and one in IN) for the first time as we've raised a lot of funds. Exciting times! We have a JV match this week, and 2 matches next week.. this week we're focusing on match conditions (warmups, score reporting, etc) and seeding the girls as our 5-13 are very competitive.