Catching Up on Friday

Catching Up With...Senior Memories from Luke Hostetter
2007 Sectional Quarterfinal against Fairfield

Looking back at this match, I remember when I lost one of my only close losses my junior year to Fairfield's 1s player during the season. I was confused about what went wrong during the match and was frustrated as well. His name was David Stutzman and he was a very smart player. He is not an obviously smart player. In fact, in many ways, his game resembles Andrew Lanctot's: quiet, consistent, but always critically thinking and never afraid to attack. He could play the big moments well and had an overall solid game.

I also remember announcing the sectional draw at the end of our "Night Out" excursions. Matt had called me and I agreed to make the announcement. I told everyone that we drew Fairfield on Thursday, which on paper is the worst possible draw, seeing as how we lost to Fairfield 0-5 and we did not get the bye. Many people were complaining. However, I was probably the only outright excstatic person there. I was very glad for a chance of revenge on a match I thought I should have won. I tried to rally the troops and sure enough, everyone showed up for sectionals on Thursday.

Well, as was the case this past year, I remember arriving at sectionals feeling like I could go into cardiac arrest at any second due to the ridiculous temperature. Gradually, my body became less numb and the teams could start getting a real warm up.

Once the matches were underway, I realized I had been overconfident. I suddenly remembered what made David Stutzman so deceptively genius. He refused to make mistakes and could run down a suprising number of balls. I should say that when I am playing a match, I get into it. Meaning that I focus on my match and my match only. Sometimes my eyes wander, but in that match, I didn't want them too. I heard Jared complaining a lot (which he improved exponentially by his senior year) and I wasn't getting pumped up by Johnny and Jeremy's personal rave parties (which didn't begin until Northwood senior year in the season). I had now lost the first set. The score was approximately 2-3 in the second set and I was abandoning all hope. Our team was struggling and I didn't feel like anyone believed in themselves, including me. That was when I got the good news. Matt ran over to my fence and I could tell he was somewhat excited but I had no idea why. It was these words that turned the match around for me: "Jonny and 2 dubs are getting competitive...We NEED you..." That was all it took. If I knew that if our team had a chance, I would do everything I could not to screw it up for them.

Finally, I found the serve that I had been working on the past two weeks. I had just been hitting my consistent second serve up until then and now all of the sudden I brought out a flat serve. I think this serve took David off guard. I was now up 5-3 and it was David's turn to serve. Well, he tried to not back down to a challenge and starting hitting flat serves as well. However, he had not been practicing this and he made more errors then me. I took the second set and with it, a ticket to stay in the match.

The beginning of my last set was a bit of a blur. By now, I believe Jared had lost and was miserably sitting by the side of his net moping. I was pretty frustrated at this and almost told Matt to tell him to leave. But mind-reading Matt did exactly what I told him to through telepathy and got rid of some negative karma (no offense Jared). 1 doubles had also lost or was very close to it. At the same time, I believe 2 doubles had won at this point. And Jonny was giving me lots of confidence in seeing him dominate with his incontrovertible patience (especially since Jonny and I had an unspoken race to see who would have the best record at the end of the season)

Now, it was 4-4 in the third set of my match. This was one of those crazy games where the score goes back and forth for seemingly infinity. Actually, it was only about 15 minutes. And 15 minutes isn't much compared to infinity. But it was one of those times where I am in the zone. I'm not sure that I have told anyone this before, but in those moments, I am so focused that my head actually hurts. In those moments, I can't hear a thing the crowd says and I am absorbed into a world full of strategy and foot work and essential match toughness skills. I somehow pulled the game out and was up 5-4. Matt gave me his usual advice, "Don't get overconfident. You haven't won yet." Even though this seems obvious, it still helps to get reminded of that. Thankfully though, David Stutzman got a little tight. He made two unforced and one forced error to give me a 40-love lead in the final game. I somehow got distracted and saw Jonny sprinting to the bench to watch me play my last point and I knew that it all came down to me. I played my usual smagressive game and Stutzman made a final unforced error to give our team the comeback of comebacks. I was so exstatic that I dropped my racket and did my crazy "run as fast as you can in the air while punching it as hard as you can" celebration.

That was a great match. I remember jumping into Johnny Kauffman's arms and previewing Johnny and Jeremy's rave parties that were to come. I also remember Karston Hess congratulating me for our team winning the sectional championship and wanting to kill him for being so ignorant (Not really. Karston's cool.) It truly is one of the greatest feelings that sports can offer, no questions asked.

Looking back on the match today, I can now see what it is like to be in David's shoes. I wish I had not been so excited that day, but that is a hard thing to control. I was so caught up in emotion and happy for revenge that I did not realize how I was being the opposite of a blessing. I know that I am kind of killing the good memories that this match brought, but I just feel like I owe David an apology for being so churlish.

I think this tells match also tells us something about life. Sometimes, crap can hit the fan for no apparent reason. Sometimes you "lose" in a situation that you should have "won." A situation like this can be a tough pill to swallow, but if you swallow enough pills you'll eventually die. So, don't do drugs.