Big Words from Rochester

"TOGETHER"

It's taken me a while to post this. Not because it was a bad match, on the contrary, we continue to improve and play our best tennis. Byeong Min Lim played amazing, despite feeling sick. He continues to show what tennis looks like when you are throughly in control.

Jonathon played one of his best matches of the season. Feeling tired, he decided to just relax and see what happened, and what happened is that he hit some great attacking balls. He was able to put pressure on the Zebra #2S, which paid off with a win.

Lucas didn't play his best, but we have those matches sometimes. It seemed like his opponent was really dialed in for this match, for whatever reason, and was hitting some pretty amazing slices and power shots with consistency.

The best match of the night may have been Brandon and Simon. They faced a team also playing their second year together at #1D, and owning a record of 13-1 on the year. Rochester #1D's only loss was a 5-7, 4-6 defeat in which they actually had held 4-3 leads in each set. So, they were games away from being undefeated. And Brandon and Simon made the match look easy last night.


And let me sing this doubles team praise, just for a bit. Brandon and Simon compliment each other so well. Brandon served excellent in this match, which set Simon up for so many putaways. And that is what Brandon is so good at. He has so many weapons that compliment his partner. If I had to choose someone to play doubles with, I would probably choose Brandon, so I could play Simon's role of smashing everything down :-)

And #2D was playing the same way. They are coming into their own here late in the season. A great win over Fairfield, a great match tonight, especially in the first set where they had everything working. Honestly, when they are serving well they are tough to beat. And they compliment each other well too, Dustin's groundstrokes, Lane's lobs and both of their net play.


I loved watching the JV play today as well. Unfortunately, we didn't get to play too many players from the other team. Jackson played a great match, Daniel flew around the court, and Liam played an opponent who chased down everything. And the rest of our JV played against each other, but it was encouraging to see how much they have improved. Jonah impressed especially as his groundstrokes have become amazingly consistent, Braydon and Chris both showed how well they've improved, and Caleb and Nathan took on Dustin in a practice game, and it was fun watch them compete.

But the thing that makes it hard to write about is that we keep doing the same thing. Getting better. Playing good matches. Making new on the court highlights. I feel like I keep writing the same thing.

So enjoy some pictures. Look at the scores. But the best part of the night was truly the drive to Rochester and back. In the bus, we had great conversation, reminding Bible classes, talking about what is going on in school, whether we'd want to be high school Bible teachers and much more. Being with this team continues to be really fun. Thanks guys!



At the beginning of the season, we made a big deal about purpose. That if your purpose was to win matches, you'd be disappointed at some point this season. If your purpose was to play a certain position on the team, you might be disappointed. If your purpose was to continually get better, your bad days would be really hard. But if your purpose was to be together, with your tennis brothers, then you would be sure to find joy. Nights like this remind me of that. Let's do this, together.

Scores
Varsity
#1S - Byeong Min Lim - 6-0, 6-1 - Jackson Sawyer (12)
#2S - Jonathon Yousey - 6-3, 6-1 - Justin Phoun (11)
#3S - Lucas Brownsberger-Keyes - 3-6, 3-6 - Zac Dishon (12)
#1D - Simon Hurst/Brandon Nguyen - 6-0, 6-1 - Ean Pugh (11)/Austin Utter (11)
#2D - Lane Miller/Dustin Miller - 6-0, 6-3 - Chase Brown (11)/Carlton Mullet (12)

Junior Varsity
#1SJV - Daniel Robles - 8-3 - David Sayger (10)
#2SJV - Jackson King - 8-1 - Andrew Dunwoody (9)
#3SJV - Liam Bradford - 8-6 - Aaron Meiser (9)