2018 - Season Preview

Returning Players with Varsity Experience
Seniors:
Liam Bradford (10-12 between #1S and #2S last year)
Jonah Farran (12-10 at #2D last year)
Philip Krabill (4-4 between #3S and #2D last year)

Juniors:
Nathan Oostland (12-10 between #1D and #2D last year)
Caleb Shenk (2-3 at #1S, #2S, and #3S last year)

Sophomores:
Will Nisley (0-1 at #3S last year)
Braden Bohn (2-4 at #3S last year)

Our team returns 7 players who got varsity experience last year. Unfortunately, only 3 of those players got a full year of varsity competition. Two seniors played the majority of our 23 matches last year, with a combined record of 22-22. Jonah Farran and Nathan Oostland went 12-10 at #2D together last year, although Nathan spent some time at #1D and Philip Krabill partnered Jonah in several matches.

Caleb Shenk spent much of last season injured after a promising start to the season. Will Nisley and Braden Bohn both spent some time as freshman manning the #3S position.

So much this season will depend upon the maturity and confidence of the players who did not get a full season of varsity competition and their transition to those positions this year. They are being challenged right now by some up and coming JV players as well, which does a lot to push our skills and determination.

Right now, our biggest varsity challenge is figuring out how to win points. We make good strokes, stay fairly consistent but need to gain the confidence to put points away. We can learn to do this both by finishing points at the net or midcourt, and by learning how to simply put pressure on our opponents.

Returning JV Players
Juniors:
Chris Craw

Sophomores:
Joseph Mounsithiraj
Tyson Miller
Aaron Shenk
Theo Siemens-Rhodes

Our returning JV players are all pushing to be varsity players. They've all improved their serves, strokes, and mentality coming into the season. I've been so appreciative of that, watching Tyson become a better server (just throw a slider ;-), Chris becoming better at his consistency, Joseph beginning to up his competitiveness, Theo's groundstrokes are more smooth and Aaron has every shot.

Our biggest hurdle is moving and practicing like varsity players. There cannot be times that we just take off and give ourselves excuses to be lazy or to fall into our normal bad habits. Learning to push ourselves to improvement becomes very important this year.

New Players
Sophomores:
Sam Setiawan

Freshman:
Josh Cartwright
Matthew Dyck
Jacob Leininger
Josiah Schlabach
Austin Shenk

Our new players have been amazing in their zeal to learn. Many of them have just taken up tennis within the past year or two, and they are gobbling up instruction. I love all the questions and desire they have to see themselves get better, and then the dedication to put new and maybe even uncomfortable things into practice.

Schedule
Our current schedule can be found on the right side of this page. It remains mostly the same as previous years, but we have dropped the Western Invitational that was in Kokomo and added a closer invitational at Mishawaka Marian.

Also of significance, only 4 of our 12 dual matches are scheduled to be at home this year. This actually excites me somewhat, because I love playing in new and interesting places. I like to travel the northern part of the state and see what other places are like. But obviously, it will be a lot of travel.

Highlights of the schedule are obviously the tournaments, which are really fun days. Also, senior night will be against Fairfield near the end of the season.

Thoughts
I'm really starting to look forward to this season. This year's tennis camp was probably the best camp we've ever had. We didn't have anything go wrong, like injuries, arguments, or extreme overtiredness. Instead many things went really well, like great attitudes, improvement and encouraging each other. That is what excites me about the potential of this team. We've also got some very positive and dedicated leaders, so I see a really enjoyable season ahead of us.

As far as winning goes, I don't know yet. We are probably a more solid and experienced team from top player down than last year's team, but we don't have the "guaranteed" win that #1D was for us last year. So, it should be a fun year to see where we stack up.

But as always, working through this season, together with this group of guys, figuring out how to change, how to play harder, how to encourage more... that will always be enough for me.