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.