The Season: Part Ten

What do we measure success by? How, as Christians, do we look at a tennis season, or anything else for that matter, and say that God has blessed us? When I get to the end of a season, what will make me proud as I look back?

It can't be wins and losses. If it's wins and losses then there is a lot that I am not proud of throughout my history as a coach. If it's only wins and losses, then I am still fuming over the East Noble regional loss, the Concord loss, the Westview loss, even the Northridge loss. But I'm not.

The thing with wins and losses is that they are quantifiable. They are a safe and standard measure. That's why churches compare themselves to one another by looking at how many people are attending. Isn't the important thing about a church the way that they are responding to the teaching and following God? So what do numbers have to do with that. It's the same with wins and losses. They are measures of our talent, okay, I can agree with that. But is talent the same as success. I answer with a certain no.

So what measures success? I find that I look at success in two ways, and they have to do with reasons that I coach. The first measure is memories, the second is relationships.

I'm a story teller, come into any of my classes and you'll hear me telling stories of friends, family, and my life. I value new stories and new experiences. Tennis provides those for me. But the memories, the stories also provide opportunities to think about the nature of reality, the nature of life. And I find that since God is the ultimate creator of all reality, all the stories point to God. They all speak in some way of the nature of God or the world that God created.

This season answered the memories measure like none before. And some of these stories are inspiring and amazing.

The Penn match we rolled into with a record of 13-4. We had lost some heartbreakingly close matches to Westview and Concord the week before. Pulling into the school parking lot was an experience in itself. It had the feel of a small college campus, not the quaint old high school building we were used to. On the field next to the tennis courts, we walked by the Ultimate Frisbee club team practicing on one of the many practice fields available to the Penn mass of students. One of the them called to us that their team was awesome and we had no chance of winning. "They're going to destroy you," he said. I have to admit, with the massive nature of the school, the Penn team, their tradition, I thought that he was going to be right. Plus, I thought maybe God was going to smite me for my earlier pride in declaring that we would beat Penn this year.

But we warmed up and did our normal routine. The Penn players swarmed around in what seemed like disarray to me and I decided to use the atmosphere of distraction as a reason to focus all of our players. I remember exactly what I said as I gathered them together. "Penn is an excellent team. But each one of you has played against a better player at your position this year. There is nothing to be afraid of." Then the craziest thing happened: Everybody believed me. We went out playing like there was nothing to lose. I was so excited as I watched our doubles teams demolish their opponents in the first set, and so proud to watch their excitement as the pumped their fists, let out screams of encouragement and accomplishment. I watched as Luke gave perhaps the best player he played all year as much as he could handle. Watched as Jonny outstroked a similar opponent. Watched as the JV players pulled off many close wins to seal their undefeated season. When the match ended, I was glowing. I wanted to share the joy with everyone.

But what we soon learn with these memories is this: The only people who care are those who have the relational bond of the tennis team. My wife was somewhat happy, the athletic director Bryan was impressed, my friends at church smiled, but no one felt the deep joy that I had like the rest of the team. And that is why the relationships I have with all of the team is so important. I have a place to share my life, especially my tennis life, because I have a group of brothers who is experiencing the same thing.

And the experiences grew. One week and one day after the Penn victory we stood on the cold courts of Goshen High School seeking the first Sectional crown in Bethany history. It was so cold we could see our breath. The whole season had been nice weather and as we warmed up for our biggest match of the season, our sweat began to steam off our bodies. I told the guys that this was the setting that memories were made out of. Then we went out and played the worst tennis we've played all season. We were so tentative, we played like we hoped we didn't lose instead of wanting to win.

In that match, it became obvious to me that the whole season was coming down to one single position, two doubles. And when they went down 1-5 in the third set, I almost began to cry. It seemed so unfair to me that someone would work as hard as Daniel, care as much as Mikey, only to see the dream crumble in their hands. I really hope that they weren't thinking about this big picture while they competed, but I certainly was. And so I started praying. And I started waving. We'd been talking about prayer all year long, and blessings, and so I combined the two. "Lord, bless these two guys. They've worked so hard, they've put in so much time. The blessing would be to let them play that way, to eat the fruits of their labor." Again and again I paced behind Daniel and Mikey's court praying and waving my hands toward them, "Lord, bless. Lord, bless." Then with more urgency, "C'mon, Lord, bless these guys." And they started to come back, and they kept coming back, and then they entered a tiebreaker to decide the team match.

A little bit of back history, Mikey and Daniel had never won any tiebreakers. They always lost in matches, except in the previous week they had defeated Assistant Coach Andrew Lanctot and Russell Klassen in a tiebreaker at the end of the first set. Daniel had said then, "I guess we can win tiebreakers." As we stood and watched the fate of the Sectional, I thought back to that first tiebreak win and hoped that they would draw confidence from it, and win their first tiebreak ever in a real match.

Of course, if you read the banner at the top of the website, they did win the match. My favorite memory from the tiebreak is them being up 6-2 and Mikey double-faulting trying to pound in an ace for the victory. I like it because it was so aggressive. Man alive, the blessings flowed then.

But it wasn't the end of the story. I almost wish it was, because it was the climax. Oh, we played awesome in the afternoon and took it to NorthWood, lifted the Sectional trophy and went to El Camino to celebrate. But it was anti-climatic. And then the season ended on Tuesday, in another tiebreak.

I don't want to get into all the specifics because we are losing space for this post. But Daniel and Mikey were twice put into a tiebreak to win our first round Regional match for the team, and twice they failed. Jonny Shenk had a chance at a third set for the same prize, but came up short. But that memory to me is just as sweet as any other, and maybe tells of the success of this team more than any other.

After the match, there were no words. There were tears and there was a gathering of the team on the court. And they looked to me, and I said something about being proud. Because I was. We stood together and didn't say anything. We couldn't look at each other because we knew what was happening. This was the end of the season. We would never share the same experiences again. Looking into the face of each senior, it felt like we were all breaking up. That tearing in your stomach, that sense of longing for the way things used to be, that desperation to go back and do something over again.

This recap of the season has been my way of trying to relive it again. Trying to learn from the memories again. Trying to hold onto the relationships that I've formed, that are bound to go different ways as the seniors go to college and I stay here and joyously get to coach the underclassmen again. And build into those relationships more and more. But I treasure the times in the hall where any one of the team stops and talks to me. I treasure the letters I get to write to the colleges the seniors want to attend. I treasure hearing about Jared's bowling team experience, or Mikey's last second tip-in in the basketball game, or Seth's continued tennis lessons, or Austin's weight loss accomplishments, or Matthew's articles in the Reflector, or Johnny's college plans, or whatever and whatever, etc.

I care. The season was a success because I care and I can tell you why. "The Season" gave me memories I can always share with you, my brothers and friends.

The Season: Part Nine

It's a common expression to say that "God works in mysterious ways." I've seen it be true however, in many different areas of life. One of my best friends was looking for a job last Christmas season, trying to decide if he would follow his dreams of graphic design or just go serve coffees and lattes at Starbucks. After a month with no leads, he went to seek the advice of a friend in the graphic design business. As things turned out, the advice turned into a job offer with one of the top firms in Elkhart county. Thing was, that job wasn't available two weeks earlier. If he had gone in for the advice two weeks earlier, when he was starting to feel desperate, he wouldn't have had the same opportunity. The waiting had seemed like a curse, turned out that it was a blessing.

For the BC tennis team, we left the NorthWood match in a celebratory mood, but had a big tournament coming up the very next day. In the tournament were teams that I was very interested in matching up against with. Indianapolis Park Tudor was at the tourney, ranked #6 in the state at the time. Fort Wayne Canterbury was at the tourney, ranked #17 in the state at the time. Perennial area power Warsaw hosted the tournament, and there were several other strong players and teams coming. I'm still very interested in how we would have done against those teams. That is to say that we never got to play any of them.

We played NorthWood on a Friday night, Saturday morning I woke up to rain. All the night and all the morning it rained, rained, rained. I had my cell phone on in case the Warsaw coach called and wanted my opinion. I had determined that my opinion would be that we should try to play no matter what. I got up and showered, put on my silly hat and got ready to drive to the school. Then the Warsaw coach called. Unfortunately he didn't ask my advice, just told me that it was cancelled.

It was depressing. I had really been hoping to use this measuring stick, hoping that we would be able to prove our team's ability to the whole region by performing well in this fairly prestigious tournament. My wife tried to cheer me up by saying that I would have a whole weekend with my family, and I just couldn't think of it that way. Well, okay, by the end of the weekend with my little son I was happy to have spent that time with him, but originally I didn't see this as a family opportunity at all. I just saw the rain as curses falling from the sky, drop by drop.

When I went to school on Monday I stepped into our Athletic Directors office to begin the process of trying to fill our schedule again now that this tournament had fallen by the wayside. I told him that I'd keep my eye open for any tourneys looking for new teams, and that if I couldn't find any that we could maybe schedule a couple dual matches instead. That's where the curses turned into God's odd blessings.

I found on the Coaches Association website that Penn was looking for some home matches at the end of September to open their new courts. So I went back to tell Bryan that I would like to play them. When I walked into his office, he told me that the Concord coach had contacted him about a new tournament, involving Westview, Lakeland, Bethany and Concord. I was excited about that tournament, but I still wanted to play Penn. I told Bryan, and he looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, and repeated, "You want to play Penn?" I had been following Penn throughout the year, looking at their scores in the paper, and I made a foolish statement. Well, it wasn't completely foolish, but it was a little bit more assured than what I felt. I thought that we could beat Penn, but what I told Bryan was, "We'd beat them this year."

Spurred by the assurity of my statement, Bryan called Penn. Sure enough, they would be glad to play us. So the Warsaw tournament was replaced by the Concord tournament, and we also added Penn into an open slot in our schedule. Our loss had been replaced. The rain had become a blessing.

Funny thing is, that if you look at the season's prayer wall, Daniel prayed exactly for that. That somehow the rain would become a blessing to us. It proved to me again and again that God answers prayers in ways that we wouldn't request. But my eyes were beginning to recognize the way that situations were being turned for the good.

So now it was up to us to take advantage of our opportunities. You can read the match reports by clicking on the sidebar. But obviously if you look at it, we lost 2 matches and won 2 matches out of the 4 rescheduled games. So it maybe wasn't the best for our overall record. In fact, if we had played our previous schedule, we would have finished the regular season with only two losses, because we wouldn't have picked up the Concord tournament and lost to Concord again and Westview. But I'll tell you what, this rescheduling was certainly a success. And that's because of what I measure success by. But that's the story of the next post.

The Season: Part Eight

Defining moments are so much easier to see when they are in the rear-view mirror. When you are living these moments, they are difficult to recognize because you are engrossed in the task at hand, the tiny goal that is being accomplished. Sometimes we are even quick to want to rush on to the next thing, not even realizing the importance of the time at hand.

I can't count how many of those moments pass in a school year. Every day I say things, make arguments, give assignments, present theories, pray prayers, do activities, etc. Only later do I find out which one of those made an impact. Rarely do I know when the thing that I am saying is going to change the course of a school year, season, or class for a student or player.

Except this season, I knew that the NorthWood regular season match was going to be a transitional moment for our team. I knew that the result would impact the way we looked at the rest of the season. The funny thing was, I didn't know how I wanted it to go. I actually thought going into the match that it might be a good thing for us to lose. I wondered if a loss to our Sectional rivals might light a fire under us, get us pumped for revenge in Sectional, and take the target off our backs. I am glad that I was wrong.

As far as defining moments go, usually when you think that you are headed into a big match, it fails to live up to its billing. Just Saturday, I invited some friends over to watch the big college football game between #2 Texas Tech and #5 Oklahoma. It seemed like a "defining moment" game to me, two of the best teams in the country it what would be an epic clash for the conference title. Far from epic, Oklahoma destroyed the Red Raiders, 65-21. The game wasn't even fun to watch. My friends left right after halftime. It did not live up to the billing.

Our NorthWood match did. I knew it would be a "battle" as assistant Andrew says, and it sure was. We won two positions rather easily (thanks to our dominating number two doubles team and steady winning senior Jonny Shenk), but the rest of the matches drug on into the early evening beneath the mammoth football bleachers behind the courts. Number one doubles clinched the first set, a big momentum builder for them, but we dropped first sets at both number one and two singles.

I think everyone there started to feel like it was going to come down to whichever match was on the courts last. It was destined to be that match that is tied 2-2 and the last position either wins it or loses it. I love that feeling at a tennis match. People all move their chairs behind the courts that are still playing. The players shout louder when they win points. Parents cheer louder when an overhead is smashed over the fence. Parents and teammates whisper more about close line calls. Coaches pace back and forth and try to offer encouragement and guidance while containing their own nerves so that the players don't know they are freaking out too. In this case, the coach is so nervous that he keeps taking off his hat and giving it to Kyle Miller, then coming and taking it back, then wringing it in his hand, then giving back to Kyle, etc. I knew there was a practical use for the hat wearing, an object to work out my shaky nerves on.

You can read the full match report here, but it was an epic finish. The number one thing that I learned this season as far as tennis coaching goes was illustrated beautifully in this match. When it comes to pressure time, the team that can confidently attack will win the match. The guy who plays not to lose, will lose. When it finally came down to that last player on the court, winner take all for his team, Jared Schwartzentruber stood out on the courts representing his Bruins.

It's kind of a David vs. Goliath story in a way. Not that NorthWood is this super huge school and we are the puny underdogs, because we were just as talented and deserving as any team this year. More in the sense of you send out your man and we'll send out ours, whoever wins the one on one battle, there team wins the war. And in that tension, the best advice is to step forward and confidently throw your stones. Play to your strengths and attack.

When Jared crossed over to the other side of the net with a 6-5 lead in the third set, I only had brief advice for him. "Stay aggressive. Big serves now." I don't remember if those were my exact words, but man... Jared delivered. He attacked. He played an aggressive game with two big first serves to build his lead, and then he swung his aggressive, attacking groundstrokes wide to the backhand then wide to the forehand and went for the win. The aggressive one who puts out their the best effort to win, they will win.

There were all sorts of other intangibles that came together for this match too, beyond the play. We had just talked at practice about praying for our "enemies" and realizing that these were the teams that we played, we had taken time to pray for the NorthWood players. So at the end of the match, instead of a "Ha, we win, you lose!" attitude, I felt more deeply for the players that had lost the match. There was a deep admiration for them that I felt. They had fought and worked as hard as we in the match, and not won. I knew how that felt. So for myself, there was team pride, but it was kept in perspective.

But the key thing about the win is that it started to cement our identity as tennis players. We had beaten a good team, and it felt like we deserved to win as well. It wasn't a fluke. I think this was a moment where we truly started to see our goal coming into focus. If we could beat this team again, we would probably be Sectional champions. And we had the confidence of beating them this once.

The Season: Part Seven

From our place of injury and lack of confidence, the season started. Our first match was a home match against Northridge. I thought that this was a critical match for us on the season, really showing us how we would do throughout the season. We had lost to Northridge 3-2 the year before, and this year we had everyone coming back so...

But of course, we weren't at full strength. We were missing Mikey and Johnny, and I was pretty sure Luke wasn't confident in taking on Jeff George, Northridge's #1, a player that he had beaten in an epic match the year before.

Looking back on the season from November, I realize now that I made a mistake. I wanted to set up our lineup so that we would have a chance to win. So I took Jared and put him in the number one doubles spot. Just as an aside, Jared had never played doubles in his entire career at Bethany. I don't even think he had played doubles on JV his freshman year. I moved Ben Mast up from the JV to play three singles, because Jonny Shenk was playing number two singles. And Seth Krabill filled in for Mikey at number two doubles.

Number two doubles ended up being no problem, but my other "brilliant" changes didn't work out so well. Jared had trouble adjusting to doubles, and so he and Jeremy Thomas lost the first set 1-6. Jared and Jeremy got it together for the second set, but still lost 4-6. Jared then went on to win 19 of his 21 singles matches on the season. So, yea, probably would have been better served leaving the lineup alone and just substituting for our injured players.

It an indication of my lack of confidence and desperation at the beginning of the season as well. I felt like I had to do something tricky and different with our lineup in order for us to defeat a team like Northridge. I felt like we would lose if we just simply lined up in our normal fashion and played them. Now I am ashamed to think about that. Jared could have played against Northridge's number two and won. Jonny could have won at number three and we still should have been able to pull off two doubles. But I was afraid, we changed what we did, and it didn't work.

Our JV used this match as a precursor to their season as well. With two of their better players representing the varsity (Ben Mast and Seth Krabill), they still pulled off a 4-3 victory (and that included a loss by a left-handed Mikey Kelly). This was the first of several statements of certainty that the JV made about their team. What I mean by that is that the JV knew, even after this first match, that they were good and that they could play with anyone. They were certain of who they were, what their ability was and what they could accomplish.

They continued these statements in the early part of the season. They crushed Goshen in their next match, went an amazing 17-0 as a team at the Jimtown Invitational. At that Jimtown Invite we took on teams like Jimtown and Concord, teams we typically don't beat, and the JV was not only winning, but winning easily. It simply reinforced the image they had of themselves.

For the varsity, it was lack of certainty that plagued the team early in the season. With the injuries, we were unsure of what we could be after the Northridge match. We had a couple of easy matches, then played Concord. There was uncertainty throughout the lineup in that match. Jared Schwartzentruber played absolutely incredible tennis, making a statement about his confidence for the season. Luke, Daniel and Mikey, and Johnny and Jeremy all started out shaky and a bit unsure. It was something that we would have to work through the rest of the month of August. We lost first sets in 4 of the 5 matches to Concord, but then recovered and won second sets in 2 of them. But for Luke and number two doubles, the uncertainty showed up again in the third set tiebreakers.

Whenever the team was uncertain, we would become tentative. That's the nature of tennis, you get it in your mind that you don't want to lose instead of that you want to win. Now, at the time I didn't know Luke was dealing with injury too, but both positions looked tentative in the tiebreakers. We lost them both. We weren't convinced yet of how good we were.

We skated through the rest of the month of August relatively unchallenged. Many of the teams we played have given us great battles in the past (Fremont, Triton), but this season we were just too strong. Still, these teams weren't state ranked quality teams, ones that we had thought at the beginning of the season that we could play with. So we were winning but still unsure of our abilities, or at least that's how I read most of the players to feel.

But that changed at the beginning of September, with one comment from a coach and one well-played team match. But that's for part eight...

The Season: Part Six

So the summer ends and the season arrives. It was about time for the season to begin. The offseason is the part of the year where we do all of our work, the season is supposed to be the blessing of that work.

I mean, we still continued to work hard. In the first conditioning week of the season we did about 40 minutes of footwork drills to start each session and then ran anywhere between 2 to 5 miles each night. In fact, one evening I gave the team the choice of how far to run, but they had to do at least 2.5 miles. Nobody did the least, most people ran 3.5 - 4.5 miles, and Luke led the team by running almost 8 miles that day. So we were working hard, and we were certainly continuing our dedication.

But the payoffs were so much closer. And the closer they got, the more bad news we started receiving. First of all, Mikey Kelly, number two doubles power server extraordinaire, broke his right hand playing baseball during the month of July. The injury put him out for several months, including our first match of the season against Northridge. Well, Mikey played in the match, left-handed, on the JV level. But obviously, moving into our first match we would not be at full strength without Mikey.

Secondly, we were struggling with confidence issues. Number three singles player Jonny Shenk found himself in a battle for his position. Both Ben Mast and Seth Krabill started the practice season playing great, and Jonny dropped tiebreaks and sets to each of them. Again, this spoke to the deep talent pool that our team had, but it unsettled Jonny. Coming off a 16-6 season, the most wins by any player in a single season that I'd ever coached, Jonny expected to be competing for an undefeated or at least highly successful varsity season. At this juncture he worried about being a JV player instead. And the confidence problems didn't stop with him. Luke Hostetter was also feeling the pressure of improving on his outstanding 2007 season. He had tied with Jonny for best record on the team, and played some incredible matches under pressure. But coming into the season, he seemed to doubt his ability to get it done in the clutch again. And there really was no seeable reason for that doubt.

These worried me. Tennis is such a mental game that belief often dictates results. I really was afraid that two of our singles players self doubts could crumble the team season, or the team unity, or the team belief. I was also worried about put people in the proper positions, rewarding the seniors for their hard work but not overlooking the talent of the underclassmen.

But what was a real blow to my confidence happened three days into the season training. Our captain, Johnny Kauffman told me he was having pain in his hip and needed to sit out. Now Johnny is the outspoken leader of the team, pushing teammates to work their hardest. When he told me he was hurt, I knew something was seriously wrong. It troubled me all that day, then what I found out seemed even more serious than what I had thought. Johnny had a pinched nerve.

Immediately I panicked. It seemed like the type of injury that could keep him out all season. Being honest, I got really mad at God. It seemed that God wasn't rewarding our players for their long work that they had invested in this tennis season. Jonny and Luke were doubting themselves, Mikey was injured, and Johnny was in doubt for much of the season in my mind. Sometimes at the end of a successful road, we forget much of the struggle. But I remember this point well. And sometimes when telling success stories we want to jump to the "but then!"

But for a good two weeks, I was in this position of doubt. Constantly I was thinking of lineups that would cover the weakness of having lost Johnny and Mikey for some time. I tried to arrange challenge matches that would revive the confidence of Luke and Jonny. I worried that other players would feel the burden and not be ready to step up and win matches because of our missing players. I fretted over the sophomores, Ben Mast and Seth Krabill, that might be inserted into the varsity lineup, that they wouldn't be experienced enough to win the tough matches, two of which would be played in the first week. I thought the Angola scrimmage might help calm some of the nerves, but it was so weird and distracting that I left that night feeling that it hurt us more than helped us.

So there we were, ready for our first match and I didn't really feel ready. Competitive but were we going to have enough to meet our goals. It seemed like we had had enough unfortunate incidents to last the season, and in this bad situation, I clung to hope that there would be blessings as well.

The Season: Summer Camp Edition

Since my appointment as coach, I have instituted several changes throughout the Bethany Christian tennis program. I made sure that we looked the part as competitors by changing our uniforms from t-shirts to true tennis gear. We began a tradition of video scavenger hunts during the last week of the season. We've come together to celebrate the start of season with midnight practices, complete with the process of praying the lines. We've actually started getting together for conditioning week, something unheard of before my time. There are probably more things as well. But the one new part of tennis season that I am most proud of is the summer camp.

Summer camp is probably the most fun that we have all season, packed into one long, tired, and community filled week. We all pile into an old school van, load up some semi-willing senior's car with our extra gear, from tennis bags to sleeping bags. We play tennis 4-6 hours a day, come back to the church where we crash and play video games, speedball, dodgeball, cards, sleep...whatever our bodies can handle.

What's amazing is that within the tradition of summer camp, new traditions have formed. We always play hide-and-go-seek, and in the enormous church building that we call home for the week, some ingenious and unfindable hiding spots have been used. We always do devotionals in the evenings, either written out or spoken in the youth room. We always go to Pizza King for one of the evening meals. And usually hit the Great Wall of China Buffet at least once during the week for lunch, and regret it later. Recently, speedball has become a loved and heated tradition.

I'm hard pressed to find anyone who regrets spending time together at team camp. This year was no exception. You can find my top ten camp memories here, but let me just tell you my perspective on the week.

After all the good things that I've just said about camp, I entered this week not looking forward to it at all. It was the first tennis camp since we have had children, and I was leaving my wife all alone with Gideon. Not exactly the best way to win brownie points. We had also spent the entire weekend before camp started, from Thursday night through Sunday night, in Kokomo for my brother's wedding, where I had had the responsibilities of the best man. From Monday to Thursday I had been running my elementary and middle school camp with Sarah Yoder and running the first of our Michigan matches. I was exhausted before the exhausting week ever started.

But it is a good tradition, and I can't let the guys down. It actually went through my mind to just have the camp at Bethany, with no overnight. Then I realized that would kill the whole purpose of the camp. So, I made phone calls on the drive home from Kokomo to make sure I knew who all was coming and then had the van fired up and ready to go come 8:00 Monday morning.

When it came to this year's camp, I have very few memories of the actual tennis played throughout the course of the week. I remember Austin and Daniel dominating a doubles game that they got paired in. I remember that we played Team 105 and Kyle Miller was the first to be picked, above any varsity player. I think his team actually won too. I remember the drawing that we found on the number one singles court. I remember running through the woods calling out how much time was left. But the biggest impression I had about the team is that they took their tennis seriously.

When we hit the courts we were ready to practice, with one exception. And this was a team expectation, not a coach expectation. When someone wasn't ready to try hard, to practice correctly, and just wanted to goof around...well, the rest of the guys weren't happy about that. And they often would let them know. Even guys who I might have labeled as slackers in the past, they were encouraging each other to work hard throughout the week.

I have to highlight that. Most of the times, people come to camp just looking to have a good time. This team realized that we were going to have a good time, so their purpose to be at camp was to get a tennis workout. And I hope that happened.

But of course we had a good time. At Pizza King I discovered that several of the seniors guys had an affinity for barbeque sauce on their pizza just like me. During speedball we found that we need to have a very strictly defined rulebook and an appointed, impartial referee in order to keep the game from descending into argued and violent conflict. Jared and Luke were basically unfindable as they hid on a roof beneath the outer roof. We dressed up as Roman soldiers and marched through the church with spears out, looking for Russell hiding in the tiniest places (stuffed into the dishwasher this year). We took showers one at a time, seeing who could undress, shower, dry, and redress in the shortest amount of time. I think Daniel might have won that contest, in under a minute and a half.

And we laid out the verbs for the season: Recognize. Remember. Bless. Pray. Okay, so I stole the whole verb followed by a period idea from modern advertising (Goshen Health Systems: True. Care. Well, okay, I guess those aren't both verbs, but, whatever...) I had gotten up at 5:00 to type out the devotionals for all the players to read, but the printers at school were all offline and the network was down and I didn't have time to run home and print them all out. So in a last second change I talked about these foundational values every night to the team. I wasn't sure that they were completely convinced. A lot of that changed when we got to the season though.

I got to see my son throughout the camp as well, as Courtney came over twice to my parents house and to her parents house as they hosted the team, each on a different night. It ended up being a wonderful week. Okay, so I was still tired all the time. But it is week's like this that make the team more than players to me. It is times of community like this that make me see the team as my brothers.

The Season: Part Five

"Summertime, summertime, windows down and watch the world go by..." - Mae

Anymore, the summer break from school just buzzes by me. From getting together with family, to vacations, to working to win Sectional titles, there isn't that much time to rest. Summer is also the time of reality, when the hope and work of the off-season starts to come to either fruition or frustration.

We actually started something new this summer too, we competed in a summer league against schools from Michigan. It was very interesting to see how we matched up against competition from across the border, and it began to show me a characteristic of our team that ended up defining much of our season. That characteristic was our depth.

During the Michigan season we played 6 matches and won them all. To be honest, not many were even close. It was interesting to welcome teams here to our facility or travel into Michigan and play teams near the lake shore. I only took one trip into Michigan with the team, when we went to play at Edwardsburg. In that trip, I began to realize what a good team we had. Jonny Shenk played number one singles for us in that match because Luke had requested that he play some doubles. Jonny won his match over Edwardsburg number one, and then Ben Mast and Seth Krabill won there matches at two and three singles as well, and fairly easily. Kyle and Matthew Amstutz blanked Edwardsburg at number two doubles. What I realized was that we would have probably beaten the Eddies if we played our JV team against them.

A week later we played Niles, and had like 9 of our players gone on a missions trip. So we had to recruit two soccer players to come and play in the match for us so that we could field a team. It's funny to admit this, but I was really nervous because I wanted us to finish undefeated in this summer league. I saw it as sending a statement or something like that because neither Goshen nor NorthWood nor Jimtown had gone undefeated. So Femi Hollinger-Janzen joined Blake Shetler at number one doubles and Jared Miller (junior) joined Matt Ebersole at number two doubles. And we were able to win. Okay, admittedly we won all the singles positions, Jonny Shenk again winning at one, Daniel Buschert winning at two, and Matthew Amstutz winning at three.

It was awesome to be able to dip into our JV team and below and still win matches. The truth was that our lower guys were just that good. It made me wish that we had played the whole season Michigan style, which counts four singles spots and four doubles spots. We have such depth that it would have made an incredible difference in our season. In fact, here's what our scores would have been including one singles JV, combining two and three singles as the third doubles team, and then number one JV doubles as the last spot.

The season scores if we had played Michigan style:

vs. Northridge - Tie, 4-4
vs. Goshen - Win, 7-1
vs. Rochester - Win, 8-0
vs. Concord - Tie, 4-4
vs. Jimtown - Win, 7-1
vs. Mishawaka - Win, 8-0
vs. Fremont - Win, 8-0
vs. Prairie Heights - Win, 8-0
vs. Triton - Win, 8-0
vs. Churubusco - Win, 8-0
vs. NorthWood - Win, 6-2
vs. Lakeland - Win, 8-0
vs. Westview - Win, 5-3
vs. Concord - Win, 5-3
vs. Fairfield - Win, 8-0
vs. Bremen - Win, 8-0
vs. Penn - Win, 6-2
vs. Fairfield (Sectional) - Win, 6-2
vs. NorthWood (Sectional) - Win, 6-2
vs. East Noble - Who Knows

TOTAL RECORD WITH MICHIGAN RULES: at least 17-0-2

Pretty awesome depth eh? Okay, so admittedly some things might have gone different, but still. That depth became evident in the summer, and that was something that excited me as a coach but it was also scary. It meant that we were going to have multiple people competing for varsity spots. That can push people to improve but it can also fracture team unity. Filling out lineup cards can become a nightmare when everybody is so good.

Especially for me. I don't like disappointing people who have worked hard, and I really worried about making the right choices. So as the summer wore on, and I began to see how close the competition was going to be for the varsity spots, I started to pray for separation. I wanted players to clearly show that they deserved the chance to play in varsity competition all year. I wanted to escape the struggle and the hard work come season time. But that wasn't going to be. We were too good all the way down through the JV (admittedly, I didn't know how good until the season actually unfolded, but I was starting to get an idea).

So the team's identity and strengths were beginning to become more evident, and the season was getting closer.

P.S. For those of you wondering where team camp fits into the summer, it gets it's own post...stay tuned.

The Season: Part Four

I'm never really prepared for the crazy cruise control of the spring. In the classroom, projects are rushed in to be done by the end of May, students are done being students from Spring Break on, and I find myself itching to move on. We've started taking a vacation right after school let's out, going to Florida, and that represents kind of like a goal for me.

Actually, a good way to describe the spring is like a new baby beginning to walk. My son Gideon is ten and a half months old and able to stand, just starting to try walking. What he does is stand up and identify his target destination, then looks at other parts of the room to see how he can get there. See, he can only take like two or three falling steps at a time, then he has to grab onto something or he will fall. So, he'll start grabbing onto the couch, then fall forward and grab onto my knee, then work his way around me and lunge for our chair, then finally gets to his goal and picks up the little play giraffe and stuffs the head in his mouth. I don't exactly have the same goals, but I take the same stumbling steps. My week off is one of those things that I stumble towards, and spring is always my time of stumbling.

As a team, we were going in so many different directions. Jeremy, Johnny, Mikey, Russell, Kyle were all playing and focusing on baseball. Jared, Jonny, Luke, Matthew and Daniel were eitehr taking lessons or at least trying to play a lot. JV guys were starting to come out and play more, as Austin, Ben and Seth became more dedicated. We were changing lots of things, giving Austin and Ben new service motions, working on Jonny's passing shots, trying to get Jared to stay positive and move his feet, trying not to lose too badly to Luke.

But with not having a consistent day on our courts because of girl's practice, trying to run middle school open gyms for soccer, tennis, and basketball, and trying to schedule times for us to run and lift weights; the spring seemed really scattered. I thought we were coming apart at the seams. I just wanted to get to my Florida trip and regroup for the summer.

It's amazing to me that we came out of this time without disillusionment. That unraveling feeling is hard to fight, so it is unbelievable that it didn't overtake everything. But I think that speaks back to the security that we all found in the vision. It wasn't short term, and their was a definite end point. Just like my son tripping and bumbling his way over to his favorite toy, the spring was a season of small, scattered steps. But we were able to reestablish ourselves at the end of that frenzied time, and look forward to the final goal we all had in mind.

The Season: Part Three

The winter is always a worrying time as a coach. There's not much fun to do during the winter if you can't play indoors, and unfortunately Bethany has not been blessed with a large indoor tennis facility. Snow falling seems to lead to attention and passion lagging, you feel like you are dragging people to get them to the weight room and stay focused on the vision that was so fresh at the end of the season.

That pretty much describes it. Throughout the snow season I checked off the days until we could start open courts again. I knew that some of our players were still playing indoors every now and then. Daniel had gotten a junior membership for Christmas, so he would get onto the courts whenever he could. Luke, Jared, Jonny, Seth were involved in lessons and therefore I would often find them out taking advantage of the free court time that accompanies that.

But I worried. Where were the NorthWood players playing, and how much? I mean, we were confident that we could be a good team. But honestly, I knew that NorthWood could still beat us in the Sectional. They returned 5 of their 7 players, and they had 3 positions back that they had beaten us at during the season. Two of those positions we had never beaten them ever. So it seemed like they might be ahead of us as far as favorites for another Sectional title.

I don't know what being the underdog makes everybody else feel like, but it makes me work harder. I felt like we needed to get ahead, especially at a couple of positions, to make sure that we could win, specifically against NorthWood. They had beaten us twice in close matches at #1D, so I felt like we needed to improve there. They had beaten us once at #2S, once at #2D, and once at #3S. I wanted to make sure that we were much better than them and secure these spots as certain points. If we could do that then we would be good to go.

The problem is that winter is also the season of doubts. It is furthest away from the actual competition, so it is the part where you can continually question your vision, how much work is going into it, etc. I never saw Jeremy and Johnny working on their tennis games during the winter, didn't talk to them too much about it, so I began to doubt them. I watched Jared lose to Luke one afternoon and wondered if Jared was going to be good enough to secure us points at #2S. I wondered and pondered and watched. I waited and waited and waited. There is simply no way in the winter to judge where you are at.

That's a most frustrating thing. And yet, could we keep working? This is what I questioned the most. When times get tough, when practice gets boring, when the vision is far from fulfilled, will we do footwork drills? Will we lift weights? Will we make the effort needed to secure court time and space? It's going to be an issue ever winter that we move through. I knew that this team of guys was special, but would they make the special efforts, be dedicated to the work?

I can't say that I would answer this with a definitive yes. I know that some guys were very dedicated. I know for sure that others were not. Some guys didn't come to team workouts but said they were working out on their own. I'll never know if they did. It was such a season of uncertainty, a clouding, a mystery.

The Season: Part Two

Several years ago I attended a conference in Atlanta right after tennis season ended. The Wednesday after the Sectional my wife and I, and the two pastors that started the house church with us, flew from cold October in Indiana to beautiful autumn in Georgia. The conference was about leadership, specifically in the realms of church leadership and business leadership. The sessions were split, half were for pastoral leadership and half were for businessmen. And half of the things we did were just ridiculous. We set the world record for world's largest pillow fight, still have the pillows in my basement to prove it. We had a game of Dodgeball against the reigning national champions...the whole arena versus them. And my friends and I went out to eat at the best Mexican restaurant ever, sat outside in the night air, watched kids play in the dark park behind us. It was a beautiful time.

But why I bring this up is due to what one of the keynote speakers had to say. This conference was kind of a big deal, so they had brought in some cutting edge presenters. This guy's name was Kevin(?) Buckingham, and he was a leading business innovator. He was inviting companies, teams, and organizations to reevaluate their approach to personal growth and learning within their companies. His theory was that the best organizations and teams DO NOT spend their time trying to improve their weaknesses, but instead they spend the majority of their time maximizing their strengths. That way they have one or two go-to skills, and then let others handle the parts where they are weak.

So, as Bethany tennis began to share a vision of confidence and winning, I began to evaluate myself as the coach. Where were my weaknesses? What did I need to focus on and do better at? While certainly there is always work to be done for improvement, this Buckingham's theory rang in my mind. If I could maximize my strengths, and my team's strengths, that was where we could really succeed. But I had to be honest about my own strengths and weaknesses, and the team needed to be honest about theirs as well.

So strengths...well, first of all I am a vision caster. I like to set out ahead of the team what it can be. I do this in a lot of various ways, but one is by setting a season theme. Even as I drove back home from watching that Regional match, the theme for 2008 was settling into my head. I knew what we needed as a program for 2008 and for the future was to buy into a continued vision of competition and excellence. We needed a tradition of feeling that we could compete and that we had just as much right to the Sectional championship as anyone else. But that wasn't a tradition that we had at Bethany. It was new, it had just formed in the eyes of seven or eight guys. But it was necessary. For the Bruins, we needed to understand, grasp, and believe in this: "A New Tradition."

I took the new words and began to form symbols around them, a new logo to represent this new confidence and belief. To tie it to the idea of tradition, the old and the continued, I wanted to use symbols that can be seen as classic. So I used the old school badge with a wreath around it, and in the badge placed the classic tennis symbol of two crossed rackets. The symbol was meant to be our new logo, but also to portray our new attitude. We are making confidence and competition as classic and a part of us as this classic-looking logo.

Okay, probably more important than this change of look were the player meetings that we had after the season. We sat down, one by one, and had a coach's and player heart to heart. The first question I asked at most of these meetings was "What is your goal for next season." One by one the players answered, "To win the Sectional." Some even mentioned that they would like to shoot for the Regional title. What was awesome about this goal setting is that it was all team oriented. Like I've mentioned before, this group of guys began to set aside individual aspirations in order to serve the team. No longer was Jonny focused on beating out Jared for the #2 Singles spot, but instead his goal was to be the best player in the area at whatever position he ended up at, so that we could win the Sectional. No longer was Daniel or Mikey gunning to be the #1 Doubles team, but to secure every win they could at #2. This uniting for each other instead of against each was an important strength of this team. It allowed us to work toward a real goal and not have to deal with in-fighting amongst the group.

So, my strength was to set the vision out there before the group. And I also have a strength of setting out a general plan of how to achieve this. I knew that we needed to have time playing, so I set up times each week to have Open Courts. I knew that we needed to get stronger and faster, so I set up times each week to lift and to do footwork drills. Then I left the choice to do these things to the players.
I was working toward my strengths as much as possible, and things looked really good to me.

But unfortunately, a shocker, I have weaknesses as well. They lay in the details. Details like how do we do footwork practice when all of the gyms are taken? Details like I know that Matthew's backhand needs work, but what can I do to fix it? Details like ordering shirts, taking care of money, making sure that the workout schedule is up to date, etc. It boils down to the fact that I'm a creative person, and like most creative people, I get lost when it comes to systematizing and simply remembering things.

And another big weakness: I lack the ability to confront people. I know, it doesn't seem like I would need to be confrontational, but its something that plays in to the season as well.

I'd like to think that my weaknesses are limited to those two things. But I'm sure that their is more. You can feel free to list them for me in the comments section :-) Strengths would be nice too! Okay, just kidding, back to the story.

I wanted to face these weaknesses though, and get help. So I told the team the honest truth, I'm not great at helping people with their tennis mechanics. I've never been taught the mechanics of tennis. I was pretty much a self-taught player, I just watched others and tried to imitate what they were doing. I took a couple private lessons during high school for working on my forehand and my serve, so I can teach the forehand pretty well but the serve I'm not sure. Anyways, there was some work to be done with the mechanics of this team (and every team) in order for them to reach their potential, and I didn't see how I could do it. So I told every one to try to get to the Racquet Club, where paid professionals could help. That was my way of admitting weakness and hoping that I could find help.

The amazing thing was that guys jumped right on it. I think that Luke, Jared, Jeremy, Johnny, and Jonny all joined in the fall session at the Racquet Club less than three weeks after the season had ended. And JV players began to be involved as well, as Seth Krabill got involved in classes. This burst of energy and involvement showed me that we had a team that was dedicated. It showed me that they were willing to arrange their schedules around this vision. Even guys who couldn't make it to the lessons at the Racquet Club, for monetary or other reasons, began to come to the fall open courts here at the school. Daniel and Jonny especially kept playing until it was too cold.

I can't tell you how much this work ethic meant to me. The work is what cements the fact that the guys get it. I mean, I was pretty sure they understood and believed in our vision of a Sectional championship. But when they came out willing to work on it, to spend time on it, to make it a priority in their off season; then I knew that they really believed it. You see, action speaks louder than words. Our actions tell us what we really believe. Our actions can condemn us as hypocrites if we don't really do what we believe. But this group's actions showed what was going on inside their heads: They knew that we could achieve great things together, and therefore were willing to wholeheartedly pursue it. We pursued it through the standing military press and slalom courses for footwork. We pursued it through hours and dollars spent at the Racquet Club and Saturdays calling each other to come in to the Racquet Club and play. Our desire showed in our doing.

The pattern had been set in the late fall, I hoped it would carry over to the next season. We believed we could be good and were ready to work at it. Everybody was getting ready to compete, hopefully to win and start a New Tradition.

The Season: Part One

Late September to late October, it is a matchless time of the year. Crisp morning air, track jackets and sweet sideways hippie hats, the dawning of autumn brings out all the best. It has not been good to my tennis team over the years however. Every year, we've stood on NorthWood cracked courts beneath the mammoth football bleachers, usually frustrating, crying, mourning the careers of seniors who passed through four years of high school tennis and never even tasted a first round Sectional victory. That was bitter tasting and needed change.

Maybe it was an unintentional change that helped us, a change that we had no control over. In 2007, the venue shifted from those cursed NorthWood rectangles, to beautiful new, green and blue courts at Goshen. So with a comfortable confidence we had entered the Sectional as the certain underdog. We had lost to every team in the Sectional during the regular season, expect for Goshen, who we hadn't played but who had finished higher than us at the Warsaw Invitational.

With a group of all underclassmen, we made a charge those two days. Defeating a senior laden Fairfield squad in a dramatic comeback, then taking down Goshen after facing 3 match points to lose it. We fell short in the final against NorthWood, but felt that we had a chance. There was a hopeful sense about the team, and I certainly felt it too.

One thing about this team sets it apart from all the others I've coached: I love to hang out with the entire team. I don't say this to be mean to other past teams, I've never had a player on my team that I didn't love and care for. But you know how sometimes they say you can love somebody but not really like them... well, I've felt like that before. But I loved hanging out with this group of players, and really it was out of my love of being with them as a team that I suggested we go watch the Regional tournament and cheer on NorthWood. I wasn't ready for the season to be over yet, and going to watch together felt like a way of extending it.

But I think watching the Regional tournament together was about the best coaching move I made all season. As I watched NorthWood compete for a first round win and saw Warsaw competing against Northridge, my confidence really grew. I realized that my group of players, sitting there around me cracking jokes and cheering on Ben Baker, this group could have competed and even won the Regional in 2007. It would have taken an enormous amount of luck and being completely on top of our games, but it was conceivable.

I've always thoughts that the biggest problem Bethany athletics has in our confidence and belief. We buy into the lie that we can't compete, and against the best schools, the bigger schools, I think we often don't even bring our best effort. As we sat in a cool October wind at Concord, I watched my players grow. I watched my players battle regret and what could have been had we defeated NorthWood. Then, I saw my players begin to believe.

It's an incredible feeling as a coach, the minute that your team gets it. As a coach, you form an idea of what your team can be very early in the season. You evaluate forehands, backhands, serves. You figure out the strengths and weaknesses of certain players. You write notes about it all. Jonny needs to improve his passing shot and he could be dominant at three singles. Jared's serve is scary when it's on, why doesn't he ever serve and volley? Can Johnny and Jeremy hold their belief when they lose a close first set? Daniel and Mikey are going to be the most aggressive two doubles team in Northern Indiana. I wonder if they'll ever believe that?

And so, when all of your work and belief suddenly joins up with their belief, when Jonny sees what he can be if he works on his passing shot, when Jared believes in his net game, when Johnny and Jeremy are convinced they can come back and fight out a match, when Daniel and Mikey believe they could go undefeated...that's simply a moment of beauty.

Just going to that Regional, just watching, began to unite us behind a shared vision. And when a whole team shares the same dream of what they can be, instead of individual dreams of positions, wins and losses, or individual statistics, when they are all on board with what the team can be, well, then the work toward that dream can begin.