Wednesday Numbers : 15

In my coaching career, the highest total of match wins that anybody had achieved was 15 until 2007. And I only ever had one player (or position) get to that number in a season. That player was Joel King. His senior year he went 15-4.

In all of those years, I also never had a team that seriously competed in the Sectional. Our closest matches in the Sectional were 4-1, and never truly looked like they would be anything but defeats.

In 2007, three positions achieved 15 wins in their season. #1S, Luke Hostetter was 16-6. #3S, Jonny Shenk was also 16-6. #1D, Johnny Kauffman and Jeremy Thomas finished 15-7. #2D was close behind with 14 victories. Not coincidentily, this was the first year we truly competed for a Sectional victory. We defeated Fairfield 3-2, defeated Goshen 3-2, and in that run each of these positions with 15 or more wins had crucial victories to advance us to the next round.

In 2008, we won the Sectional for the first time in Bethany Christian history. Our position record looked like this on the season: #1S, 15-7; #2S, 19-3; #3S, 18-4; #1D, 15-7; #2D, 20-2. In this most successful season, all positions won over 15 matches.

This is a simple observation. Depth of team quality makes a difference on whether a team can win Sectionals. In the 2003-2006 years, we had some high quality players but as a team we were overwhelmed at Sectionals. In 2007, we were only a little short, but were right in the hunt because of overall team quality. In 2008, we were stacked with quality (honestly, we probably had 3 players on the JV that could have won 15 matches for the varsity!)

But 15 seems to be about the number to shoot for. Honestly, that's just the way the numbers play out, I'm thinking that if all positions can win about 13-15 matches, that is probably the needed quality to compete for Sectional titles. And there is some flexibility. But this is a reasonable goal. So next season, I hope everybody will be aiming high. Making their way towards a "magic number" that will help us bring another trophy back to BC.