Bonus Climbing Reports: #1D vs. Goshen

Match Report
Jonathon and Dustin qualified for the Individual Doubles State Tournament by winning their match against Fairfield in the 1st round of the Team Sectional. So, they began that tournament against Goshen, playing at Concord.

It was a long wait for the play to get started, as we waited for the Team Regional matches to finish up. Jonathon and Dustin were scheduled to take the 2nd court to open up, but it took a good hour and a half to get that second match done. That's because there was some outstanding and very close tennis being played in the Regional. Concord downed Angola 3-2 by winning a 6-4, 6-4 decision at #2D, and Jimtown won a 3 setter at #1S to beat Westview 3-2. It was exciting to watch these matches as we faced off against all of the teams during the regular season.

But then Dustin and Jonathon got to head onto the courts. It was an exciting and strange experience. Exciting because all of our players were gathered around one match to watch. Strange because I usually don't get to watch every point of a match. Tonight, I got to watch every point. And that gave me a really good handle on how we were playing.

And how were we playing? Pretty nervous. Understandable for sure, but there seemed like only a few moments that we really got our game going. Credit to that goes to Goshen, because they really played a nice match and kept the pressure on us. But there were certainly some highlights to the match.

First of all, Jonathon's service games were highlights. We were able to keep the pressure on Goshen during those games because Jonathon has hitting really nice serves and Dustin patrolled the net particularly well. Most times that Jonathon served, we could count on a fairly quick game.

Secondly, we played aggressively in several big points. I'll match this up with a third highlight as well, which is the way that we bounced back from missed opportunities. For example, in the first set, we held a 5-4 lead with Dustin serving. In the game we had several opportunities to end the set, but double faulted, hit tentatively into the net, and so on. But in the last two points of the game, we confidently stroked the ball crosscourt and attacked the net. On the final point, Dustin set himself up for a big overhead that he slammed over the fence.

And again, at the end of the match, on Dustin's serve, we had the chance to end the match. We got up 40-0 in the game, but then saw Goshen come back to 40-30. On that point, Jonathon hit an overhead that looked like it had won the match for us. But Diego Torres ran it down. Then Jonathon swung at an overhead again, and hit it long. However, we recovered on the next two points to secure the victory.

All in all, it was a good match for us. We fought through our nerves and showed some grit. We were rewarded with the gift of playing again, for which we are grateful!

Scores
#1D - Dustin Miller/Jonathon Yousey - 7-5, 6-4 - Diego Torres (11)/Ben Bontrager-Singer (11)