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.