Sweat Socks: RL HS Coaching Tennis Dynasty

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by 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.

That depth is so crucial as the season goes on, and it's really great that you've got a full schedule for those JV kids because it'll give you all the depth you need for those post-season runs in the future.

One of the things I wish we'd have been able to do over the past few years is develop our JV kids more, I'm huge on player development but I needed more help.

Anyway, good luck this is really cool and I'm glad you all going to be able to get out there well supported!

[Young Drachma]

We had our first two matches of this season both rained out so far. The Monday match will be reschedule, but today's match against another Top 5 program in 4A/3A/2A/1A won't be.

We traveled to them -- they're our furthest match at 90 minutes away -- but it started raining an hour into the match. It was a good test for our girls, their top player is two-time state semi-finalist and their 2nd singles player is super solid too and we beat them as a team last year, but those two spots were a good test for us.

This year, 1 singles split sets and that was huge as she won the first against a two-time state semi-finalist. Only 3rd singles & the first two doubles were on when it rained, we'd lost 2nd singles but had a split in 2nd doubles and 1st dubs had a lead going into the 2nd set.

Given we're rebuilding, that I was missing an experienced player -- while reintegrating a junior who missed last year -- it was a solid showing. We have a lot to work on, but it gave me confidence heading into the regular season, which was my biggest concern.

[Young Drachma]

We had our first two matches of this season both rained out so far. The Monday match will be reschedule, but today's match against another Top 5 program in 4A/3A/2A/1A won't be.

We traveled to them -- they're our furthest match at 90 minutes away -- but it started raining an hour into the match. It was a good test for our girls, their top player is two-time state semi-finalist and their 2nd singles player is super solid too and we beat them as a team last year, but those two spots were a good test for us.

This year, 1 singles split sets and that was huge as she won the first against a two-time state semi-finalist. Only 3rd singles & the first two doubles were on when it rained, we'd lost 2nd singles but had a split in 2nd doubles and 1st dubs had a lead going into the 2nd set.

Given we're rebuilding, that I was missing an experienced player -- while reintegrating a junior who missed last year -- it was a solid showing. We have a lot to work on, but it gave me confidence heading into the regular season, which was my biggest concern.

[Young Drachma]

Won our first match of the year today on a blustery but sunny day against a 6A team that we played last year in a tournament.

This time, we won 6-2, winning all the singles matches and 3rd & 4th doubles. It was a gutsy win, 3rd singles, 1st doubles, 3rd doubles & 4th doubles all went 3 sets. 4th doubles we won on a 3rd set tiebreaker in lieu of the full 3rd set.

I went into the match assuming that a 5-3 win would be doable where we sweep the singles & won 4th doubles, getting a set out of 1st doubles and 3rd doubles coming back to win after dropping the first set (along with 3rd singles) was pretty impressive because most of these kids just have very little real match experience.

No more varsity matches until April, the two I had this week got rained out/rescheduled and next week, I'm mostly staging a JV lineup against a 2nd year varsity squad in our league, which will be good for those fringe kids and some of the JV players to get some reps in a realistic match environment.

[Young Drachma]

One week of the regular season and this season has been an interestng emotional ride. Given the loss in depth and leadership, we just didn't have anyone with the gravitas to fill the vacuum there. Our best player is still our best player and she leveled up considerably from playing doubles last year.

The deal with this team is if you play us with straight singles and doubles spots like in order of talent, we'd usually beat you because we're just a better singles team than we are at doubles. But even in that scenario there are some caveats.

Anyway, as I usually do, I did some late season lineup hijinks this week and it was a mistake against our rivals and the 3rd place team in the league
(the latter who we beat in the 2nd match of the year) who both beat us this week -- our first league losses in five years -- but the fact this team took this long to lose in league was kind of an accident of time anyway.

I'm obviously annoyed about it, but I blame myself for not running a tighter ship this year. I tried to give this team the latitude of a more experienced team and they're just not that. I'm not sure a tougher approach would've worked, but I do think more structure would've been good and frankly, this is the sort of team where having 2 assistant coaches would've been better because you could do drills and work on mechanics as we have a lot of raw players who could benefit from that kind of work and I don't think I managed the balance right.

Per usual, the kids are also overcommitted schedulewise so there are the same antics with missing practices and matches. Unlike my past teams, I don't have the talent + depth combo that makes it easier to mitigate when that happens.

We have Districts in a week -- we have two matches next week that I'll optimize for winning over any more lineup hijinks because I'm kind of tired of it. (We're 8-6 on the year, not a bad season when you consider 4 of those losses were to the Top 5A & 6A programs in the state.)

I've got a gameplan for winning the District tournament -- it'll take a bit of luck, just because I don't know what the wild cards will be and there's always one or two -- and have decided that would be the best outcome from this year.

I always used to tell my boys team back when i first started coaching here that the regular season in Oregon HS tennis doesn't matter, and I have to remind myself of that going into Districts and just work to optimize them for performance, specifically on the 1st day of Districts.

Either way, I think we maximized this roster...I'd just like to make sure we don't leave any meat on the bone heading into the off-season. I might coach again some day, but I'm 99.5% sure that I'm done with this team after this season. I've never had a spring here where I wasn't coaching and I'd like to get into some other stuff, the kids always being busy with side committments makes me want to pursue my own because it's always been disruptive to my life in a lot of ways but I felt committed to th club, so I'd just power through.

I've gotten more than what I needed out of it, I've given a lot too.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'm just gonna throw a little tidbit in here for the heck of it.

Last season saw the Athens Academy boys insane run of 35 consecutive region titles come to an end.

This season saw them again finish 2nd in the region and no particular reason to expect a run through the 32 team state tournament bracket.

Instead, they'll play for a state title tomorrow morning.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I'm just gonna throw a little tidbit in here for the heck of it.

Last season saw the Athens Academy boys insane run of 35 consecutive region titles come to an end.

This season saw them again finish 2nd in the region and no particular reason to expect a run through the 32 team state tournament bracket.

Instead, they'll play for a state title tomorrow morning.

That's awesome.

[Chas in Cinti]

We just finished a successful weekend trip to Indianapolis (we're in Kentucky about 20 minutes south of Cincinnati). Our individual regionals start on Friday, and our team regionals start next week. We've been very successful this year (4 losses, and 2 were where the other coach stacked us... we'd crush them if we played again). Our #1 singles and #1 doubles are going to be seeded and doubles will be the favorite to win the region (only 1 loss this year and it was against 2 D-1 offerees from Louisville). For the team tourney (new this year for the first time in 12 years), we'll break up our doubles team and have a stack at 1,2,3 singles. It will come down to us v. the local Catholic girls team... should be exciting!

[Young Drachma]

We won the District doubles tonight down, after being down 2-6, they came back and closed it out 2-6, 6-4, 6-4. It was great because we'd only saw them once this season and it did not go well. So this was a mildly surprising upset, but I knew this team was beatable.

Gutsy performance though. We have a singles player and two doubles team headed to state next week. Not bad for a rebuilding year.

Originally Posted by Chas in Cinti

We just finished a successful weekend trip to Indianapolis (we're in Kentucky about 20 minutes south of Cincinnati). Our individual regionals start on Friday, and our team regionals start next week. We've been very successful this year (4 losses, and 2 were where the other coach stacked us... we'd crush them if we played again). Our #1 singles and #1 doubles are going to be seeded and doubles will be the favorite to win the region (only 1 loss this year and it was against 2 D-1 offerees from Louisville). For the team tourney (new this year for the first time in 12 years), we'll break up our doubles team and have a stack at 1,2,3 singles. It will come down to us v. the local Catholic girls team... should be exciting!

That's awesome that Ohio is also doing a team tournament, I need to read up about it. Oregon really needs to step up our game, a team tournament would be a game changer here -- even with fixed lineups -- and the committee that meets to decide only meets once every 4 years so I have to get some ducks in a row this off-season and see if we can get the ADs behind our effort for a team tournament.

[Young Drachma]

We won the District doubles tonight down, after being down 2-6, they came back and closed it out 2-6, 6-4, 6-4. It was great because we'd only saw them once this season and it did not go well. So this was a mildly surprising upset, but I knew this team was beatable.

Gutsy performance though. We have a singles player and two doubles team headed to state next week. Not bad for a rebuilding year.

Originally Posted by Chas in Cinti

We just finished a successful weekend trip to Indianapolis (we're in Kentucky about 20 minutes south of Cincinnati). Our individual regionals start on Friday, and our team regionals start next week. We've been very successful this year (4 losses, and 2 were where the other coach stacked us... we'd crush them if we played again). Our #1 singles and #1 doubles are going to be seeded and doubles will be the favorite to win the region (only 1 loss this year and it was against 2 D-1 offerees from Louisville). For the team tourney (new this year for the first time in 12 years), we'll break up our doubles team and have a stack at 1,2,3 singles. It will come down to us v. the local Catholic girls team... should be exciting!

That's awesome that Ohio is also doing a team tournament, I need to read up about it. Oregon really needs to step up our game, a team tournament would be a game changer here -- even with fixed lineups -- and the committee that meets to decide only meets once every 4 years so I have to get some ducks in a row this off-season and see if we can get the ADs behind our effort for a team tournament.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Just another one of those "this is sooooo different than what I'm used to in Georgia" comment

Singles championships were discontinued here 30 years ago. It's been strictly team titles (in GHSA) since 1995. And I think the Best of 5 (3 singles + 2 doubles) format has been consistent throughout that time.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Just another one of those "this is sooooo different than what I'm used to in Georgia" comment

Singles championships were discontinued here 30 years ago. It's been strictly team titles (in GHSA) since 1995. And I think the Best of 5 (3 singles + 2 doubles) format has been consistent throughout that time.

Wow, okay. Yeah, Colorado does both an individual tournament and then added a team tournament. Obviously Oregon still crowns an individual state champion in singles & doubles and then uses the points from those state tournaments to crown the team champion, so it's possible here to play your own teammate for the state title.

I don't imagine a world where we'd be able to get enough momentum to get rid of the state singles/doubles tournaments, because there are so many schools that aren't competitive in team tennis who use that for their 1 or 2 kids who are good enough to represent the school. I think this is just a vestige of the western states being relatively rural and very spread out.

New Jersey has an individual tournament separate from the team state tournament that happens over two weeks and is like 128+ players or something, but there you can only qualify your top singles & doubles pairing (though occasionally, a school that's deep like newark academy can send another player)

I would actually like it here if we only had 1 singles/1 doubles at state and only the district champs & finalists in the bracket, in 6A that'd be just 16 singles & 16 doubles, in 5A it's be just 8 and 4A we'd only have 10 and the whole thing could be done in a day.

There are instances where unseeded kids run the table, but I don't know of too many situations where a kid finishing 3rd in their District somehow comes back a week and goes on a heater through the whole bracket and wins it all, so no real need to include them.

Needless to say, they haven't put me in charge yet though.

[Chas in Cinti]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

We won the District doubles tonight down, after being down 2-6, they came back and closed it out 2-6, 6-4, 6-4. It was great because we'd only saw them once this season and it did not go well. So this was a mildly surprising upset, but I knew this team was beatable.

Gutsy performance though. We have a singles player and two doubles team headed to state next week. Not bad for a rebuilding year.




That's awesome that Ohio is also doing a team tournament, I need to read up about it. Oregon really needs to step up our game, a team tournament would be a game changer here -- even with fixed lineups -- and the committee that meets to decide only meets once every 4 years so I have to get some ducks in a row this off-season and see if we can get the ADs behind our effort for a team tournament.

Our #1 Doubles is in the regional finals tonight... playing against two seniors, my sophomore and 7th grader are still favored. Just to clarify, I'm in Kentucky (Ohio has a fall season). Found a girl south of the river about 20 years ago and couldn't get her to move north...

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Wow, okay. Yeah, Colorado does both an individual tournament and then added a team tournament. Obviously Oregon still crowns an individual state champion in singles & doubles and then uses the points from those state tournaments to crown the team champion, so it's possible here to play your own teammate for the state title.

I don't imagine a world where we'd be able to get enough momentum to get rid of the state singles/doubles tournaments, because there are so many schools that aren't competitive in team tennis who use that for their 1 or 2 kids who are good enough to represent the school. I think this is just a vestige of the western states being relatively rural and very spread out.

New Jersey has an individual tournament separate from the team state tournament that happens over two weeks and is like 128+ players or something, but there you can only qualify your top singles & doubles pairing (though occasionally, a school that's deep like newark academy can send another player)

I would actually like it here if we only had 1 singles/1 doubles at state and only the district champs & finalists in the bracket, in 6A that'd be just 16 singles & 16 doubles, in 5A it's be just 8 and 4A we'd only have 10 and the whole thing could be done in a day.

There are instances where unseeded kids run the table, but I don't know of too many situations where a kid finishing 3rd in their District somehow comes back a week and goes on a heater through the whole bracket and wins it all, so no real need to include them.

Needless to say, they haven't put me in charge yet though.

I wish I was able to shed some light on the elimination of the singles titles (which I think should probably have been called Individual titles, just for clarity lol) but I wasn't really following closely that far back.

Looking at the titles since then, the issues with tennis in the state become pretty obvious.

'95-'00 we had only 4 classifications -- the largest class (4A) won by schools from Gwinnett or Cobb Co (i.e. affluent metro). Of the other 3, 16 of 18 titles were won by private schools.

'01-12 we went to 5 classifications -- largest class 5A all public (no privates IN 5A iirc) - with a rare DeKalb title, and 4 from a Columbus area school. 4A had 9 of 12 winners private, privates won 35 of a possible 36 of the other titles (and the outlier was the uber-affluent Johns Creek which was still new at the time, playing below their eventual size)

'13-'16 we had 7 classifications. Public swept the 2 largest, privates won 11 of the possible 12 titles where they were mingled.

Of our mid-sized classifications, privates have won 34 of the last 38 boys titles, 30 of the last 38 girls titles. The exceptions include local (to me) North Oconee multiple times (the recipient of white flight from Athens) and a 3 year streak by a real outlier in south central GA. Of over 400 publics schools, only a half dozen outside of the 2 largest classes have ever won a title in the past two generations.

And in those mid/small classifications, there aren't even enough schools fielding a tennis team to fill out the 32 team brackets completely with 4 teams per region. (and in recent years, the Atlanta city schools do qualify 4 but typically forfeit their matches rather than compete in the state tournament at all, with the outcome being 99.999% certain).

edit to add for context re: fielding a team -- 3 singles, 2 doubles = team, so 7 players per each boys & girls squad. And it isn't unheard of to see teams competing while giving a walkover in at least #2 doubles

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Chas in Cinti

Our #1 Doubles is in the regional finals tonight... playing against two seniors, my sophomore and 7th grader are still favored. Just to clarify, I'm in Kentucky (Ohio has a fall season). Found a girl south of the river about 20 years ago and couldn't get her to move north...

I love that Kentucky lets middle schoolers who are good enough play high school sports. Wyoming should do this too, but they can't get them to budge, same in Oregon but I suspect that it would cause some issues in some sports so they don't bother -- which i get from a team cohesion perspective -- but as a tennis coach it would be so good for a younger player's development to be able to play "up."

Technically in Oregon you can play HS as a middle schooler, but it's basically burning eligibility. There's a girl who did that -- won 4 state titles -- but her first was as an 8th grader and then she stopped senior year, went on to play D2 in California.

I always said if I ever had a kid do that -- my school would probably never allow it -- I'd only have them play home matches or local matches, you'd basically ease them into it and give them a taste but not make them take on the full brunt of the varsity deal. For the players I've had who were good enough for that, the real payoff would've been Districts and State and they'd have managed.

But the freshman have a hard enough time with it tbh, so I imagine going down a year they'd have to be pretty mentally composed. When I coached that one Wyoming season, I let the 3 advanced middle schoolers practice with varsity since that was allowed. The kids would sometimes complain, but those kids were the best because they were always down to work, did whatever I asked and were just generally helpful.

No surprise that they won a state title last fall -- boys and girls did -- and all of those kids I had practicing with us ended up making varsity, two won state titles as freshman.

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I wish I was able to shed some light on the elimination of the singles titles (which I think should probably have been called Individual titles, just for clarity lol) but I wasn't really following closely that far back.

Looking at the titles since then, the issues with tennis in the state become pretty obvious.

'95-'00 we had only 4 classifications -- the largest class (4A) won by schools from Gwinnett or Cobb Co (i.e. affluent metro). Of the other 3, 16 of 18 titles were won by private schools.

'01-12 we went to 5 classifications -- largest class 5A all public (no privates IN 5A iirc) - with a rare DeKalb title, and 4 from a Columbus area school. 4A had 9 of 12 winners private, privates won 35 of a possible 36 of the other titles (and the outlier was the uber-affluent Johns Creek which was still new at the time, playing below their eventual size)

'13-'16 we had 7 classifications. Public swept the 2 largest, privates won 11 of the possible 12 titles where they were mingled.

Of our mid-sized classifications, privates have won 34 of the last 38 boys titles, 30 of the last 38 girls titles. The exceptions include local (to me) North Oconee multiple times (the recipient of white flight from Athens) and a 3 year streak by a real outlier in south central GA. Of over 400 publics schools, only a half dozen outside of the 2 largest classes have ever won a title in the past two generations.

And in those mid/small classifications, there aren't even enough schools fielding a tennis team to fill out the 32 team brackets completely with 4 teams per region. (and in recent years, the Atlanta city schools do qualify 4 but typically forfeit their matches rather than compete in the state tournament at all, with the outcome being 99.999% certain).

edit to add for context re: fielding a team -- 3 singles, 2 doubles = team, so 7 players per each boys & girls squad. And it isn't unheard of to see teams competing while giving a walkover in at least #2 doubles

This makes sense, I can see where the arms race would happen and where it would make sense not to bother with the charade of doing anything besides team tennis. The walkovers and still be competitive thing does happen here, though usually with teams that can't field full rosters.

[Chas in Cinti]

My sophomore/7th grade team won regionals and made it to the final 16 of the state tournament. I forgot to come back here and update... what a season! Lost to two seniors, finally the moment caught up with them. They could beat that team 5 out of 10 times, but not that day... it was a big match at a big court... just too much!

First planning meeting for Spring 2025 is on Monday. We're starting a Parent Booster Club next... the growth continues!