Bethany Christian at Wayne Invitational

Click here for photos from this match.

So things went very much according to expectations. Every position in which we came up against Wayne or Elmhurst well dealt with them easily. Each position when we came up against Wabash, well, that was a match.

At #1 singles, Luke Hostetter drew Anthony Griffin of Wabash right off the bat. This match was nip and tuck all the way through the first set. Luke seemed to continually be on the verge of taking the set when Anthony would find a way to force through and tie it back up. Finally, Luke took control with a quick start to the tiebreaker, taking a 5-0 lead before losing his first point. He finished off the tiebreaker 7-3 to take the first set. Afterwards, Griffin's confidence appeared to be shot. Luke won the second set without losing a game in strange contrast to the strongly contested first set. In the final, Luke played Wayne's #1, who was simply overmatched by the array of shots Luke could throw at him, all with fairly consistent power. Luke won easily to secure his individual championship.

At #1 doubles, the task seemed even easier. Also drawing Wabash in the first round, Johnny and Jeremy steamed to a first set lead of 5-0 before losing a game. The Wabash team seemed timid in comparison to Jeremy and Johnny, who were taking control of the net and making the other team hit over them. This was difficult as they were hitting their overheads extremely well also. After the first set was quickly secured, it looked like there was no comeback for the Apaches. Indeed, #1 doubles were able to dominate the second set similarly to the first and advance to the final. In the final they also played Wayne. Comments before the match seemed to already indicate what the outcome would be, as Wayne's players asked Jeremy and Johnny to "not kill them because [they] had to go to work that night." Johnny and Jeremy complied by not physically abusing the Wayne doubles, just abusing their strokes. After an easy 6-1, 6-1 final the Bruins were champs at #1 doubles.

#2 singles was a tale of two different matches for Jared Schwartzentruber. In the first match against FW Elmhurst, Jared dominating from the opening serve losing few points and no games to cruise off the courts before anyone else was done with their first set. In his final, he also matched up against Wabash's Nick Macaluso, a strong, consistent, fast player who ran down most of Jared's big shots and was able to wail on a few of his own. Jared tried desperately to get back into the match in the second set, but Niko seemed to deny every attempt. In the end Jared had to settle for 2nd despite his best effort.

At #3 singles, Jonny Shenk followed much the same path. Winning his first match of the day against Wayne set him up against Frank Granger of Wabash, an interesting combination of consistency and attacking that left Jonny searching for answers. In a close first set, Jonny held serve for quite awhile and saw Granger get consistently frustrated with the long points that he was able to keep him in. However, Jonny seemed to lack the extra bit of power needed to take care of Granger when he came to the net. In the second set, Granger began to pick on some of Jonny's weaknesses and the match was hard to hold together. Jonny fell by a 6-0 score in the second set.

This meant that outright victory came down to #2 doubles. A win and we had the title of the invitational alone. A loss and we would tie in points with Wabash. Full of confidence, Matt Amstutz and Daniel Buschert rushed out to a 5-0 first set lead before dropping 4 games in a row to make it close. But then they were able to right the ship, won the set and took a 1-0 lead in the second. The match went back and forth as Matt and Daniel became more timid and stopped moving as much, due to increasing nerves. They held a 5-4 lead, but couldn't close out the match. Then they held a 6-5 lead, but couldn't close out the match. Then it went to a tiebreak and they quickly went down by a big score in the tiebreak and then could not recover and the match headed to set number three. In set number three, the Bruins were constantly playing from behind. They would go down a game and get it back, go down a game and get it back. It was frustrating to watch, but they seemed as if they were going to pull it together. When they played a great game to tie the set at 4-4 it seemed as if the momentum may have turned. But it wasn't to be, they lost the next two games, ending in a nervous service game.

This meant that Wabash and Bethany were tied at 14 points for the day. With no official tiebreaker, the official result was a tie for first. However, with Wabash having beat Bethany at 3 of 5 positions, they were allowed to take the team trophy as sort of a unplanned tiebreker. It was disappointing to lose the outright title, but guys were trying hard. Unfortunately, we will have to overcome some mental blocks that we've had against playing our best if we are to reach our goals this year.

I have great faith that this will start happening this week.