The Season: Part Five

"Summertime, summertime, windows down and watch the world go by..." - Mae

Anymore, the summer break from school just buzzes by me. From getting together with family, to vacations, to working to win Sectional titles, there isn't that much time to rest. Summer is also the time of reality, when the hope and work of the off-season starts to come to either fruition or frustration.

We actually started something new this summer too, we competed in a summer league against schools from Michigan. It was very interesting to see how we matched up against competition from across the border, and it began to show me a characteristic of our team that ended up defining much of our season. That characteristic was our depth.

During the Michigan season we played 6 matches and won them all. To be honest, not many were even close. It was interesting to welcome teams here to our facility or travel into Michigan and play teams near the lake shore. I only took one trip into Michigan with the team, when we went to play at Edwardsburg. In that trip, I began to realize what a good team we had. Jonny Shenk played number one singles for us in that match because Luke had requested that he play some doubles. Jonny won his match over Edwardsburg number one, and then Ben Mast and Seth Krabill won there matches at two and three singles as well, and fairly easily. Kyle and Matthew Amstutz blanked Edwardsburg at number two doubles. What I realized was that we would have probably beaten the Eddies if we played our JV team against them.

A week later we played Niles, and had like 9 of our players gone on a missions trip. So we had to recruit two soccer players to come and play in the match for us so that we could field a team. It's funny to admit this, but I was really nervous because I wanted us to finish undefeated in this summer league. I saw it as sending a statement or something like that because neither Goshen nor NorthWood nor Jimtown had gone undefeated. So Femi Hollinger-Janzen joined Blake Shetler at number one doubles and Jared Miller (junior) joined Matt Ebersole at number two doubles. And we were able to win. Okay, admittedly we won all the singles positions, Jonny Shenk again winning at one, Daniel Buschert winning at two, and Matthew Amstutz winning at three.

It was awesome to be able to dip into our JV team and below and still win matches. The truth was that our lower guys were just that good. It made me wish that we had played the whole season Michigan style, which counts four singles spots and four doubles spots. We have such depth that it would have made an incredible difference in our season. In fact, here's what our scores would have been including one singles JV, combining two and three singles as the third doubles team, and then number one JV doubles as the last spot.

The season scores if we had played Michigan style:

vs. Northridge - Tie, 4-4
vs. Goshen - Win, 7-1
vs. Rochester - Win, 8-0
vs. Concord - Tie, 4-4
vs. Jimtown - Win, 7-1
vs. Mishawaka - Win, 8-0
vs. Fremont - Win, 8-0
vs. Prairie Heights - Win, 8-0
vs. Triton - Win, 8-0
vs. Churubusco - Win, 8-0
vs. NorthWood - Win, 6-2
vs. Lakeland - Win, 8-0
vs. Westview - Win, 5-3
vs. Concord - Win, 5-3
vs. Fairfield - Win, 8-0
vs. Bremen - Win, 8-0
vs. Penn - Win, 6-2
vs. Fairfield (Sectional) - Win, 6-2
vs. NorthWood (Sectional) - Win, 6-2
vs. East Noble - Who Knows

TOTAL RECORD WITH MICHIGAN RULES: at least 17-0-2

Pretty awesome depth eh? Okay, so admittedly some things might have gone different, but still. That depth became evident in the summer, and that was something that excited me as a coach but it was also scary. It meant that we were going to have multiple people competing for varsity spots. That can push people to improve but it can also fracture team unity. Filling out lineup cards can become a nightmare when everybody is so good.

Especially for me. I don't like disappointing people who have worked hard, and I really worried about making the right choices. So as the summer wore on, and I began to see how close the competition was going to be for the varsity spots, I started to pray for separation. I wanted players to clearly show that they deserved the chance to play in varsity competition all year. I wanted to escape the struggle and the hard work come season time. But that wasn't going to be. We were too good all the way down through the JV (admittedly, I didn't know how good until the season actually unfolded, but I was starting to get an idea).

So the team's identity and strengths were beginning to become more evident, and the season was getting closer.

P.S. For those of you wondering where team camp fits into the summer, it gets it's own post...stay tuned.