Bethany Christian vs. Angola - Scrimmage

What a strange night it was.

The first big event was the mini-bus. Driving to the match with assistant coach Andrew Lanctot, the team had a close encounter with a bale of straw. A mammoth bale of straw that jumped off a truck, ripped up the side mirror, dented the driver's door, and put three large ripples in the roof of the bus. Recognizing God's protection, nobody was hurt in the accident, which certainly could have been worse. Have you ever seen those straw bales in the fields, they are massive. A lot of damage could have been done if the bus would have hit it straight on.

So the match got off to a distracting start, which is never good for this scrimmage. Because it is not a normal match, there is a really weird format to follow. First everyone plays a 30 minute block of singles, then everyone plays a 30 minute block of doubles, then we play regular varsity and JV lineups for 20 minutes. We had to quickly stretch and then be ready to begin play, because waiting for the police to file the accident report had put us an hour behind schedule.

After a round of rousing introductions though, we were off. It was a shaky start as people were finding their feet a little bit, and probably feeling a bit rushed. Luke and Jared got off to very good starts, taking early leads at one and two singles. Jonny battled but to little avail against Angola's number three player, who had actually played number one singles for them the past two seasons. His play seemed to indicate that he would be number one again this year before too long.

In other single matches, Matthew, Seth and Ben all began slowly in tight matches. They all played decently, but by their own admission had better matches in them. The final scores didn't look all that bad, but we are trying to push ourselves towards excellence. The bright side was that our goal of excellence is able to be clarified, and now moved towards.

Daniel and Jeremy had big wins, and Mikey and Kyle both dropped close matches. Austin, Blake, Matt, and Jake traveled to another set of courts, and all played very good matches according to the reports. Austin and Matt pulled out wins, while Blake was just starting to play well when time was called.

Then doubles was scheduled to start, but not before some major drama. Angola had a player who felt as though he had been treated unfairly, so in the middle of the scrimmage, he quit the team. This threw the Hornet team into a bit of confusion, and delayed the beginning of the doubles segment again.

When it did begin, we were able to comfortably win 6 of the 7 matches. The only match we dropped was the #1 match, where Angola paired their top two players against our #1 doubles team of Jared and Jeremy. Still, we only lost by a point. It was in these doubles matches where we played some of our best tennis, but also began to be distracted. It is a trait that hopefully will not carry on to the season, for we do not want to take on the mindset of our opponents but instead think and act in our own minds.

The final segment was a bit of a wash. Most matches were ties, as one team won the first tiebreak and the other team won the next. Luke did look very comfortable and in charge in his 10-point tiebreak, and #1 doubles pulled a sweep as well.

As with most matches, there was good and there was bad. What made this match hard was that there was also the utterly distracting. Hopefully we are becoming better players for dealing with it, and moving on to our next practices and matches!

Scores
Singles
Luke Hostetter - 6-2 - Josh Quandt (11)
Jared Schwartzentruber - 7-4 - Ben Hoffman (12)
Jonny Shenk - 0-11 - Nick Burlingame (11)
Seth Krabill - 5-6 - Brian Bienz (10)
Ben Mast - 6-6 - Taylor Zank (12)
Matthew Amstutz - 4-8 - David Johnson (12)
Daniel Buschert - 7-3 - Justin Elston (11)
Jeremy Thomas - 10-1 - Kevin Heierman (12)
Kyle Miller - 4-5 - Gavin Bush (11)
Mikey Kelly - 3-8 - Jeremy Snyder (11)
Austin Loucks - 7-2 - John Shumaker (12)
Blake Shetler - 2-6 - Scott Moberg (10)
Matt Ebersole - 7-2 - Drew Rowe (10)
Jake Gerig - 3-5 - Unknown

Doubles
Jared/Jeremy - 4-5 - Quandt/Hoffman
Daniel/Ben - 7-5 - Johnson/Zank
Seth/Matthew - 6-5 - Bienz/Shumaker
Luke/Kyle - 8-2 - Heierman/Unknown ?
Jonny/Austin - 7-4 - Lamont/Lehman
Mikey/Matt - 7-5 - Hottell/Warren
Jake/Blake - 7-4 - Simmons/Tribble

Lineups - Tiebreaks
Luke - 4-7, 10-2 - Quandt
Jonny - 8-10, 7-5 - Hoffman
Ben - 6-8, 12-10 - Bienz
Jared/Jeremy - 7-4, 10-5 - Johnson/Zank
Daniel/Seth - 7-1, 6-10 - Heierman/Snyder
Matthew - 7-4, 10-6 - Unknown?
Mikey - 7-2, 7-2, 7-10 - Shumaker
Matt - lost - Moberg
Austin/Kyle - 7-5, 7-2, 7-5 - Elston/Bush
Jake/Blake - 4-7, 7-1, 5-10 - Wagner/Lamont