Monday Morning Match Memories: Triton, 2003

I decided it was time to start a new feature here on the Bethany Christian tennis website, because I've run out of stories to tell about last season. Every Monday morning for the rest of the winter, I will highlight a match from my six years of coaching. Some will be ones that current players were involved in, some will be from the 2003 season when I started and our seniors were in 7th grade. It should be fun to look back at some of the history. Well, maybe I'll even get Andrew Lanctot to take us back to the glory days of the 1998 and 1999 seasons. This could get real fun!

MMMM #1 - 2003 at Triton

2003 in general is a year of regret for me. I was a very young coach that year, just out of college, 22 turning 23 during the season, and very inexperienced as a leader. When I look back at the year, I don't think I ever realized how much talent the team actually had. I remember thinking that we were talented enough to be a winning team, but when I think about it now, we were probably talented enough to win a match in the Sectional too. I wish I had the experience and coaching knowledge then that I do now, and that team would have provided several more victories.

But the match that I am most proud of from that season came on a Saturday morning down at Triton. It's the weirdest match on our schedule, a dual match on a Saturday morning at 10:00. It's led to some of the weirdest matches that we've played as well. They usually have a fairly talented team, that we are rarely ready to play.

In 2003, I knew nothing about any of our opponents. So when we showed up at 9:15 to find that only there coach was at the courts I was surprised. And I think I figured that we would win the match easily. You see, even by then I had learned that the more prepared team is usually the better team. I was a little too over confident however.

Their coach was a lady, unfortunately I don't remember her name. She greeted us warmly, shook my hand and looked confused about why we got to the courts so early. I said we just wanted to make sure we were comfortably warmed up when the match began, and she gave us a couple of courts to warm up on. So we hit and waited for our opponents.

We had a light banter going on, but when Triton's players began to arrive I tried to watch and see what our prospects might be. I wasn't convinced that it was going to be easy, all of a sudden. They had a talented senior number one, and good athletes at all the other positions. There is this short fence on one side of the Triton courts, and I remember sitting with my back against it watching and trying to figure how we would finish above .500 if we lost this match. My normal optimism was getting worn down by this point, as you can see.

I have to be honest, I don't remember that much about the actual match and the points that were played. I have general impressions, but... For example, I remember that there were several close sets in matches that were far away from one another. Triton's setup has the three singles court down a short hill from the other varsity courts. I can recall jogging back and forth between number one singles, number three singles, and number two doubles, all of whom had close moments in their matches.

The one position I didn't visit all that much was number two singles. Joel King was a sophomore playing that position for Bethany, and he was having the most successful season out of all of the players. If there was one position I never needed to worry about, it was two singles. Joel had already pulled out upsets of Jimtown, NorthWood and won the LaVille Invitational in his position. So I was completely shocked when he lost the first set here at Triton. At that point, I was sure I would be marking this match down as a loss. If your most consistent position fails, you are usually in trouble.

But I scurried back and forth between Colin Yoder at one singles and Ben Shenk at three singles, trying to inspire them both to victories that would seal the match for us. Senior Jordan Mumaw and junior Evan Stahley had secured the first point for the Bruins, and sophomore Joe Friesen and freshman Jordan Kauffman were in the process of wrapping up the second. That put us one match from victory. With Colin making a charge in the second set and Ben in a first set tiebreak, I figured one of their matches held the key to the comeback.

It was always interesting to coach Ben Shenk, because he pretty much had one type of game and had a difficult time changing. He had beautiful topspin groundstrokes, but they weren't particularly hard. He couldn't come to the net well, or didn't like to, and didn't have a big dominating serve. It didn't leave very many options for changing things when the match was going badly. And for a while he was leading so things didn't need to change. But his sophomore opponent Tyler Berger began to rally, and took the first set into a tiebreaker. Berger continued to be aggressive, buoyed by his success, and took the first set. When Ben dropped the set, things looked grim. We had lost first sets in three matches, and that often is an indicator of how the rest of the matches will go.

But Colin Yoder took the lead in the second set of his match against fellow senior Braxton Barton. Hope spring alive as he continued to work his consistent and well-formed strokes against Barton's unorthodox style. Barton's serve was almost like a forehand, twisted and out to the side with wicked topspin. His strokes were hit hard with biting topspin as well, and they caused Colin problems when they were hit in. But Colin was forcing errors at the beginning of the second set, and Barton looked frustrated.

As always happens, Colin was a bit shocked to be in the lead, and so in response to that he became tentative. Why does tennis always work like that? Suddenly Barton's shots were finding the court and Colin was losing his grasp on the set. Ahead 4-3, Colin and I talked on the grass at the side of the court. It was a motivational talk, filled with "you can do it's" and "keep working hard." It also didn't work. Barton took the next three games and won the match.

Ben's match looked bad too. Berger had taken a 4-1 lead in the second set. It was all over and we had lost.

Except, I had forgotten about Joel. I'm being serious, I had almost lost track of where his match was at. Call it inexperience. Call it pessimism. Whatever. But when I looked over to see how close he was to losing, it turned out that he was winning. He was up 5-4 in the second set, and within minutes had sent the match to a deciding third set. Hope was new.

I never know if what I say between sets and games helps, hurts or makes no difference at all. Joel sat with me and began to get that crazy competitive look in his eye as I talked to him about staying focused and staying pumped up. Then he stormed out and won the first game. Then he lost the next five games in a row to trail 1-5.

Okay, well, I had already come to grips with losing the match when I had watched Colin and Ben go down to defeat. So I braced myself for the upcoming disappointment... well, okay no I didn't. Joel managed to win the next game to make the score 2-5 and earn himself one more changeover. At the changeover, I reminded him of what I'd been telling the team all season, from the first practice. Play with competitive emotion. When you make a good shot, celebrate it. Yell, get pumped. Use your adrenaline. "Let's go!"

Well, Joel went with it. And you could see that it was going to work. With every point that he won, Joel let out a yell. It seemed to be annoying to his opponent, but he was also becoming discouraged as his third set lead evaporated away. This was another one of those experiences where our team gathered and cheered Joel on as well, continuing to feed his emotion and confidence. It's funny though, because at that point Joel wasn't a big hitter. He was more of a consistent player. So he was winning points by hustle, getting back and forth and keeping his shots in the court. And then getting pumped when it forced mistakes from his opponent. I don't mind that, but it probably does break "proper" tennis etiquette. I think about if this happened now, I probably would have told Joel to only cheer his winners, or the important points, but it's hard. You are excited when you win a point, no matter how you win it, and when you are mounting a comeback, you want to let it out.

Joel mounted the complete comeback, winning 6 games in a row to take the third set 7-5 and seal the match for the Bruins. It was an celebratory ride home, as we had won 3-2.

What I'll always remember about the match is the emotion that Joel put into coming back. The ability to just say "No, I'm not going to lose this match" and then make it come true. It was the inkling of the special player that he would continue to be for this program. There was a stubbornness in his eyes, that when fueled with belief, turned into a powerful force on the courts.

And I'll remember Bod calling me into his office on Monday morning after the match and telling me of the complaint filed by the opposing coach for Joel's lack of sportsmanship. It will never cease to frustrate how the coaches of our sport try to remove emotion and psychology from the game. Tennis is supposed to give us experiences that teach us how to live life, and if you teach players to pretend that they have no emotion, to keep it bottled up, to be stoic through a loss, when will they ever learn how to deal with emotion in a way that is useful. Raw passion is a powerful thing, and it should be approached, cultivated, and celebrated. Perhaps someday we'll see a match where the fans are allowed to make noise and yell throughout the match, where the players can pump their fists after every big point, and the coaches can scream their lungs out in encouragement and motivation. That is what this match always reminds me of.

MATCH BOXSCORE
Bethany - Score - Opponent

#1S - Colin Yoder - 3-6, 4-6 - Braxton Barton
#2S - Joel King - 2-6, 6-4, 7-5 - Kyle Whiteman
#3S - Ben Shenk - 6-7, 3-6 - Tyler Berger
#1D - Jordan Mumaw/Seth Troyer - 6-0, 6-1 - Jared Nifong/Julian Ravenscroft
#2D - Joe Friesen/Jordan Kauffman - 6-2, 7-5 - Chris Miller/Michael Reece