Monday Morning Match Memories

MMMM #11: Bethany Christian at Jimtown JV Invitational, 2008

With having such a successful varsity season, I am often tempted to write only about the accomplishments of that group. Rightly so, they deserved to be written about because of their hard work and dedication to a single task of winning the Sectional, and for their accomplishing that task. It is difficult to do something like that.

But in the 2008 season, another group of players worked equally as hard at an equally impressive task. The Bethany JV players crushed just about everyone in their path, in fact defeating all comers in the 2008 campaign. Among this undefeated team were three undefeated individuals: Matthew Amstutz, Seth Krabill, and Russell Klassen. There were also five individuals who only lost once: Ben Mast, Misha Rebec, Nick Rebec, Kyle Miller and Claude Stickler.

I talked about this group when I wrote the match memory for the Penn match. But really, I think I was proudest of them was when we won our only tournament. It was the only tournament we played, and we dominated it. So today is dedicated to the undefeated 2008 Bruins!

This Jimtown JV tournament holds special importance for the Bruin tennis program. It is a same style tournament with the same opponents that we play a week before in a varsity invitational at Concord. In fact, contrary to most JV matches and tournaments, the matches are 2 out of 3 sets, just like varsity. Because of these similarities, this tournament often predicts how future Bruin varsity teams will fare against these same opponents.

This tournament is early in the season, and so Andrew and I didn't have our lineups completely decided yet. We had a good hold on the singles positions, but weren't sure yet how doubles would work out. I was hoping to take along many JV members to the tournament and get many of them at least 1 match. Well, on Thursday before the tournament, I got a call from Concord's head coach letting me know that they didn't have enough players for the tournament. Therefore he wondered if we wanted to "loan" two of our players to the Minutemen to play their "#2 doubles" position. Of course, it would be an official forfeit from them at the position but at least more people would get to play. I jumped on that chance, and I assigned Blake Shetler and Jake Gerig to the task of being Concord's #2 doubles team.

I went into the tournament nervous. I wanted our JV to make a good impression against these typically formidable opponents. The reality was, this JV was basically going to be the 2009 varsity. They needed to really dominate other JV teams in order for me to feel comfortable and confident heading into the 2009 varsity season.

I also have to admit, I don't get to see as much of the JV matches as I'd like to throughout the season. So this tournament gave me a full day to get familiar with the match tendencies of each player, their strong and weak points, style of play, and all other information that I gather over the course of a season with the varsity but have less time to with the JV. My wife begs me to not go to the JV tournament and take a weekend off, otherwise every weekend but one gets filled up with stuff. The first year we had this invitational, I obliged my wife's wishes. This year I had to go. I needed to know more about my players, especially in a 2 out of 3 set format.

And so, well, I don't know how to say this... I didn't learn very much about my players. Because we just absolutely annihilated everyone that we played. So, I guess you could say that I learned that we were really, really good. We opened the tournament against Concord, and that match set the tone for the rest of the day. All of our matches against Concord contained at least one 6-0 set won by us. Seth was the only player to double up and get the magical 6-0, 6-0, but the most games allowed total were 3. To put this in perspective, despite our varsity's dominance this year over teams like Churubusco, Prairie Heights, Fremont and Mishawaka, they only accomplished the same feat against Lakeland. And here, our JV had pounded that badly on Concord!

It was after this Concord match that I began to realize how good our JV team was. I mean, Matthew Amstutz could move straight up the team 7 spots and win 15-16 matches at #3 singles, I'm sure. I think that is something that those of you who are moving up this year will have to keep in mind. Not that you don't have to work, but that you do have the talent. Another thing that this match caused me to think about is how many of my previous varsity teams would this JV team have beat. I'm not sure, but I know many of the matches would have been close.

After Concord, we played Jimtown. I was a bit nervous because they brought down two varsity players. I wondered if they could win those two spots and then maybe steal a third somewhere. The answer was an emphatic no. Ben beat #3 varsity singles player Bret Giddings 6-3, 6-3. Giddings would go on to win his conference at the #3 varsity singles position. Seth beat #2 doubles player Josh George 6-2, 6-0. George would go on to win his conference as half of the #2 doubles position. Jimtown then joined their best two regular JV players at #1 doubles and Russell Klassen and Kyle Miller defeated them. It was getting better and better as the day went on.

Not to mention that Blake and Jake were winning their matches for Concord!

At the #2 doubles positions, we were simply wiping out our opponents. 6-0, 6-1 for Misha and Claude against Jimtown, then in the last match against Rochester, 6-1, 6-0 for Nick and Austin. For the day, everybody who played won at least one set 6-0. That's remarkable.

Okay, so what all this domination meant to me is that we have a pretty great group of players moving into varsity positions this year. This coming year we'll graduate 6 seniors who were on the courts for the Sectional title, and we'll have 6 really good players to take their place. We're going to have a good season. We're going to have a winning record. And if we play hard in practice, get out and play in the spring and summer, we're going to have a shot at Sectional.

We can leave behind dominating JV tournaments and look forward to dominating varsity tourneys!