Monday Morning Match Memories

Last Thursday, in my "Rant", I brought up a new statistic for use on this site, the WRS. This stat has predicted the winner of a match at an amazing clip of 96.7%! In fact, it has only failed to predict the winner of a match once, and this Monday Morning Match Memory is about that one exception. More than that however, I want to emphasize the reason that this match was the exception.

In 2007, NorthWood defeated our team twice. Both times we fell by a score of 3-2. The main problem with NorthWood was that they had a position that they were going to win every time we played. At #1 singles, Preston Swain was one of the best players in all of the area. In fact, he was voted #3 in District 2 for the All-District team. His senior year, he only lost to the District's #1 player, Deon Shafer of Warsaw. And so, entering 2008, he returned and gave NorthWood one almost unbeatable point.

So, instead of winning 3 out of 5 matches, we really had to win 3 out of 4. At all of the other positions on the team, we had won once in 2007 and lost once. We returned all of our players and NorthWood returned all but one, #3 singles. So it was a dead even match (basically) besides Preston's #1 singles point.

But while that point gave the Panthers an advantage, it also gave us motivation. I've never seen a team more dedicated in the offseason than the 2008 team. Jonny Shenk, Matthew Amstutz, Jared Schwartzentruber, Luke Hostetter, Daniel Buschert, Johnny Kauffman, Jeremy Thomas... these seniors played all the time. And not just played, they worked on their games.

I remember talking to Jared about his footwork. In 2007, he had a losing record of 10-11 on the year. In 2008, he turned in a brilliant year of 19-3, with only two losses coming in singles play. He often looked effortless in his play, gliding across the court with beautiful footwork. I asked him what changed and he said, "Well, my footwork was bad and slow and I basically never thought about it. So in the offseason, each time I'd play, I would pay attention using correct footwork, split steps, ready position, and all. By the time the season came, it was becoming second nature."

Let me translate that a bit to make it more general. Jared recognized a weakness, and he spent conscious effort on correcting the weakness. He (and all the others) worked on a lot of other things too, and I think they had a good time doing it. They knew how close they were, and that if they worked harder than NorthWood in the offseason, they could overturn the 3-2 losses into 3-2 wins.

I can't say if we "outworked" NorthWood in the offseason, but we did work! And it paid dividends throughout the season. Jared went from 10-11 to 19-3. Jonny Shenk went from 16-6 to 17-5. Daniel Buschert and Mikey Kelly went from 14-7 to 20-2!

It paid dividends against the Panthers as well. In the regular season matchup, both Jonny Shenk and the "Dominant Duo" (Daniel and Mikey) breezed through their opponents. This left us with only one position to win to take the match. Preston Swain did his part for the Panthers, winning in two sets over Luke.

So it came down to #2S and #1D. At #1D, Johnny and Jeremy charged out of the gates and took the first set but didn't sustain their energy or level of play into the second set. The third set was probably the most intense doubles I've ever seen, with both teams being aggressive, attacking, and passionate about the game. It went down to a final set tiebreaker, but we couldn't pull it out.

So it all rested on Jared and his improvement. And it was Jared's footwork that saved him. His oppenent, Panther senior Austin Hostetter, hit bullets low over the net, giving little time for reaction. The only way for Jared to win the match was to attack these shots and not run them down all day. To do that, he had to get to the shots quickly. He was on his toes, pounding the ball deep into Hostetter's back court. If he got a short ball, he moved up quickly and attacked it. Playing with such swift feet, he won the third set and sealed the match for us.

It was quite a turnaround, and it continued to the Sectional Final, which we won 4-1. The hard work, the concentration, the focus on getting better... this is how you overcome.