Some things went as expected. Nathan Brendle played really good tennis, albeit against an inexperienced #1 singles player in Goshen's junior Austin Stutzman. He quickly sealed the first point of the match for either team by stroking and powering his way to a 6-1, 6-1 victory.
But after that...
#1 doubles was weird. The first set, Abe and Ike were on the back foot a little bit. Playing the junior duo of Sam Stegelman and Sylas Buller, a team who advanced out of our Sectional last year by defeating Fairfield, we knew that it would be a tough match. Still, Abe and Ike were playing a bit tentative. So, to their credit, they changed. They stepped into returns, attacked the net, turned the tide of the match. They lost the first set, but seemed to establish some momentum headed into the second. Except... they didn't. After a tight first set, they couldn't keep it together in the second. Everything just seemed a little bit off, and I'm not sure why.
At #2 singles, the oddity was that Sol wasn't really playing his trademark game. Instead of swinging through with power on his groundstrokes, getting his beautiful topspin, everything was flat and pushed. And it wasn't for lack of trying to figure it out. In the second set, Sol had a breakthrough, finding his strokes and pulling back from a 4-1 deficit to make it 4-3. But it was a little too late as his opponent refocused as well and pulled out the set.
At #2 doubles, it was perplexing to watch Parth continue to hurt himself. Perhaps that affected play a little bit, as Parth's shoulder began to ache and then he ran into the fence chasing a lob, cutting his finger and banging up his hand. Meanwhile, Joel slid all over the court but the duo couldn't ever quite pull themselves out of the holes that they were put in early in each set. The Redskin doubles were solid, and should be a position of relative strength for the team this year.
Finally, the epic #3 singles battle, where apparently you are only allowed to win on the north side of the court. Throughout the first set and second set, only two games were won on the south side. In the first set, that game was won by Redskin sophomore Zach Ganger... so he won the set. In the second set, Hans won that game... so he won the set. These were two very similar players, so it was appropriate that the match would head to three sets. Both players were also playing their first third set. And it was Hans that jumped out to the lead, 5-1. The match tightened, as Ganger began to hit confidently through the ball. At 5-3, Hans had 2 match points, but both fell into the net as Ganger took another game to get to 5-4. But in the last game, Hans began to really hit out, but game himself more margin for error. He actually had an easy game, holding his serve at love to win the match.
Although I didn't get a chance to see much of the JV matches, they continued the odd patterns. Landon continued to look like he was winning every point while somehow coming up on the short end of the match. Tristan had better strokes than his opponent but couldn't win points. Our 2 seniors were in a tight match the whole way against much younger, inexperienced opponents. And Jack and Justin, a new combo for the night, played like old friends and played our best match of the JV.
All in all, it's early in the season and we're still struggling to be a team that all plays our best tennis at the same time.
Notes & Stats
- Abe Thorne was playing his third match against the doubles tandem of Stegelman and Buller. He has yet to win a set.
- Hans is now the only undefeated Bethany player on the season. He and Joel were the only winners against Northridge, and he was the only one to repeat the feat against Goshen.
- In his whole varsitlky career, Nathan Brendle has never lost to a player in a lower grade than he is.
- Jack Erlacher picked up his first win of his Bethany career tonight!
- The losses to Goshen tonight broke winning streaks of both the varsity and the JV. The varsity had won 5 straight against them before tonight's loss.
- No tiebreaks tonight? What is going on?
Scores
Varsity
#1S - Nathan Brendle - 6-1, 6-1 - Austin Stutzman (11)
#2S - Sol Brenneman - 1-6, 3-6 - Adam Bratten (12)
#3S - Hans Miller - 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 - Zach Ganger (10)
#1D - Ike Lehman/Abe Thorne - 4-6, 1-6 - Sam Stegelman (11)/Sylas Buller (11)
#2D - Parth Patel/Joel Gerig - 3-6, 2-6 - Derick Hostetler (11)/Hudson Kay (9)
JV
#1SJV - Tristan Clark - 2-8 - Peter Vukovich (10)
#2SJV - Landon Weldy - 5-8 - Luke Rush (9)
#3SJV - Paul Krabill - 1-8 - Giovanni Aguayo (9)
#1DJV - Wade Troyer/Himal King - 9-7 - Joel Byler (10)/Andrew Vetter (10)
#2DJV - Justin Zehr/Jack Erlacher - 8-5 - Drew Weddle (9)/Dirk Oyer (9)
#3DJV - Noah Hochstetler/Roberto Ramos - 0-8 - Luke Rush (9)/Giovanni Aguayo (9)
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