HOW GOOD WERE SOME OF THE INDIVIDUALS WE FACED OFF AGAINST
Players that LIAM faced this year...
Do you see that slate of players that Liam had to play last year? That's half of his schedule who end up being on All-District or All-Conference teams. Much like our team, Liam pushed several of these players, some to third sets, some to close sets. But he wasn't able to pull out a victory.
This is the difficulty of our schedule. Being a #1 player means you are going to face the best player every night. Some of these players didn't come from very strong teams - but they were excellent individuals. This is not a new phenomenon for Bethany Christian tennis. But Liam competed admirably. Last year, our #1S position (outside of Liam) only managed 5 wins for the season. This season, Liam got 9!
Of the players on this list, only 3 return for next season. So whoever plays #1S won't have to face these specific players. But it will still be tough. Looking ahead, it's obvious that new players will move into these positions on the All-District and All-State teams. Like maybe some of the great players we played at other positions...
Best Singles Players We Faced at #2S, #3S
It's hard to see the good players at positions other than #1S, because they tend to not get as much recognition. But we can look at a couple of players who got recognition by winning their conference tournaments or being named to their All-Confercnce teams. There was even one player on this list, Ben Vincent, who was named All-District despite being a #2S player.
Interestingly, these players who really performed well under pressure in their conferences were players that we performed really well against in the season. Caleb defeated Eric Gaby in our match against Fairfield, and took Alex Driscoll of Wabash to a 3rd set tiebreak. Philip lost in a 1st set tiebreak to Carlos Lichty, and held a 5-2 set lead over Colin Hochstetler in our Fairfield match before losing a close match.
So, at #2S and #3S, we played close with the best and even defeated one of the better players we faced. That bodes well heading into next season. What about double's teams?
Best Doubles Teams We Faced
Doubles teams are even harder to figure out, because they get so few rewards. But our #1D team faced a fairly difficult schedule this year. 9 of their 23 matches were against teams that made All-Conference in their league this year. One of those matches we won, but the other 8 were losses. Still, that means that 8 of our 12 losses were to All-Conference teams.
At #2D, we played a lot of good teams, but only two earned All-Conference honors. Westview's #2D was a team that we took to 3 sets, and felt like we could have defeated.
What's the overwhelming message?
We played a lot of really talented players this year, who were at the top of our area or were the best in their leagues. We beat very few of them. Liam lost 13 matches this year, 11were to All-District or All-Conference players. In all of these lists, we only pulled off 3 victories against these high caliber players.
This has to change for us to become a more successful team. We've got to regularly be defeating players who compete at the top of their league. That will definitely be a point for us to focus on in the off season. We should not be practicing and competing to beat each other, but to prepare to beat these really good players that we will face. We need to push ourselves to play with the NorthWood All-District players, the Westview and Jimtown doubles, and more.
Because its when we defeat these really good players that we have the most fun!
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