Jimtown Preview

Details: Monday, August 18, 4:30 PM at Jimtown

Last Season Review: Last season we defeated Jimtown 4-1, early in the season. We did not have a rematch against them in the Sectional.

3 Interesting Facts:
#1 - The coaching staff at Jimtown is excellent and experienced, including Steve Fledderman who has 311 wins entering his 34th season and Todd Tharp, who had been Concord's head coach for many years.

#2 - This will be our first season playing a regular season match at Jimtown in some time. For years we played them at the Concord tournament. The last few years we've played them at home (once because of a rainout when we were supposed to play there).

#3 - Jimtown and Bethany Christian both have won the Sectional once, and we won those first titles in consecutive years. We won the 2008 Sectional followed by the Jimmies winning their first in 2009. Neither of us have been able to grab a second title yet.

Jimtown Details: The Jimmies come off a 6-11 season last year, but one where they improved throughout the year and actually finished 4-2 in their conference. They return 4 varsity starters from that team, including #1 singles Mikey Pawlak and 1 of their #1 doubles players. Pawlak finished 3rd in his conference last year, while Brock Johnson finished 4th at #3 singles. Hunter Price and Isaac Pope got to their conference championship but finished runners-up at #2 doubles.

Bethany Christian Details: We come off a great scrimmage against 6-time defending Sectional champion Angola. We challenged them to several close singles matches, and in a regular scored match there is no doubt it would have been 3-2 for one of us and right down to the wire. We are ready to open the competition season, and need to be confident and focused.

Projected Jimtown Lineup:
Since no one has played any matches this season, this is a complete educated guess... but why not?

#1S - Mikey Pawlak
#2S - Brock Johnson
#3S - Ben Jankowski
#1D - Hunter Price/Isaac Pope
#2D - Jesse Oakley/Matt DeCloedt

Outlook: Whenever you start your season with a Sectional opponent, you better be ready to play. I think that we can have confidence. We're experienced, we've had a good offseason, and we played well on Thursday night. But we have to have a "savage" edge. We've got to be ready to play our tennis, the way that we want to attack and construct points. We've got to be ready to put balls away. We've got to be ready to compete and finish off our matches. Let's go out with sheer energy and play with sheer joy!