- How good was our schedule?
- How did each position do?
DID WE REALLY IMPROVE?
First of all, there are many ways to look at improvement. First let's look at improvement from last season to this season. Many years ago, I looked at the statistics around the area and our own stats and figured out a little formula to generally predict records the following season. It basically goes like this:
- If a player stays at the same varsity position, there record generally increases by 20-30%. For example, Ben Mast was 12-8 his junior year at #1S. That's 60% win percentage. His senior year he went 18-4 at #1S. That's 81% win percentage. So, he increased by about 21% staying at the same position.
- If a player moves up a varsity position for the next season, their win percentage usually drops 5%-10%. For example, Ike Lehman went 8-7 at #3S in 2011, for 53% win percentage and then in 2012 went 7-8 at #2S for a 47% win percentage.
- For a doubles team, you can average their winning percentages together and then apply the formula to get a decent prediction.
So with that idea in mind, here would have been some projected records for our lineup in 2018.
So, you can see that there was significant improvement over what the expectations could have been, especially at #2S, #3S, and #2D. Even at the #1 positions, which tend to have the hardest competition, there was slight improvement or at least close to what was expected. Plus, Liam played a killer schedule at #1S (more on that coming up in its own post!) Just know that 12 of his 13 losses came to players who were All-District, All-Conference, or won some other type of postseason award.
So, from season to season, we actually improved slightly more than the expected norm. But what about our improvement through the course of the season?
One way to see that type of improvement is to look at our play against the same team from the beginning of the year to the end of year. We played Goshen the first week of the season and then also in the last week of the season. I could tell just by watching us play against Goshen in the Sectional that we were playing our best tennis at the end of the year. The scores bear that out too. Below are our scores from the first Goshen match as compared to the second one. Note that Goshen strengthened their doubles teams after our first match, by moving Diego Torres from #2S to #1D, and Drake Crowder from #1D to #2D.
Goshen Scores
1st Match was during first week of season, 2nd match was in Sectional
So, looking at scores, it is clear that we played a much better match at the Sectional than earlier in the season. It's not quite a perfect science, but it does show that we were fighting hard and playing well toward the end of the year.
Good Matches vs. Bad Matches
Another way of looking at how well we were playing is looking at each position and seeing how many bad losses we had. I classify a bad loss "very scientifically" (meaning not scientifically at all :-) It is a bad loss if we played badly, a good loss if our opponent just beat us. In that way, we could have "bad wins" as well, where we won but didn't play well.
In this chart, each match is marked by a "G" if we played well, a "B" for bad if we played poorly, and a "N" for neutral if it was hard to determine how well we played (usually because the other opponent was so good or so bad it was difficult to evaluate our own play). Admittedly, this is completely arbitrary. I am assigning the goods, bads, and neutrals. But I think it still reveals some interesting things.
What I find interesting when I go through this myself is that the last "B's" that are assigned mostly correspond to the Elkhart Central match. Starting with the Portage Invite, our team really began to play our best tennis. I think there is something about that tournament that relieves our perceived pressure. We play that tournament individually, all of us in individual tournaments for our position. And I think that frees us up from the "team score" pressure. We just play, we just enjoy tennis, and that really is the final thing that lets us play our best.
I also think we learn a lot as we play three matches in one day. I've found that the Jimtown and Fremont JV tournaments do the same thing for the JV guys. These tournament events simply "unlock" our potential.
The other factor in us playing our best matches at the end of the season was that our most athletic players really begin to round into tennis form at the end of the season. When you've been playing multiple sports, practicing them through the summer, maybe working a job too, and then the tennis matches start after just 10 practices, it can be tough to be ready at the beginning of the year. Once we hit the midway point though, we really start to see a month of practices bring out our natural ability.
THE BOTTOM LINE
I wish we had statisticians for each court that could track winners, errors, double faults, etc. Then I could do some great analysis of our improvement. Since we don't I just have to trust my eyes. And it felt like Caleb double faulted less, Jonah hit forehands harder, Will finished more overheads, and Philip hit more winners as the season went on. Actually, this team felt like one that experienced the most growth through the season of the many that I've coached. Philip, Jonah, and Liam were a big part of that... but I'm hoping we can keep that momentum up.
I wish we had statisticians for each court that could track winners, errors, double faults, etc. Then I could do some great analysis of our improvement. Since we don't I just have to trust my eyes. And it felt like Caleb double faulted less, Jonah hit forehands harder, Will finished more overheads, and Philip hit more winners as the season went on. Actually, this team felt like one that experienced the most growth through the season of the many that I've coached. Philip, Jonah, and Liam were a big part of that... but I'm hoping we can keep that momentum up.
Let's keep the improvement rolling!
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