Perspective on the 2018 Season #4

HOW GOOD WERE SOME OF THE INDIVIDUALS WE FACED OFF AGAINST
Players that LIAM faced this year...

Player	Team	Award #1	Award #2	Award #3
Alex Serwatka	Concord	NLC All-Conference	All-District	Senior All-Star
Thomas Pries	St. Joseph	NIC All-Conference	All-District	Senior All-Star
Kurtis Davis	Westview	NECC All-Conference	All-District	Sectional Champ
Aaron Streit	Fairfield	NECC All-Conference	All-District
Wes Troyer	NorthWood	NLC All-Conference	All-District
Austin Pearison	Jimtown	NIC All-Conference
Josh Bussan	Marian
Gabe Rodino	Northridge	NLC All-Conference
Rob Ford	Wabash	TRC All-Conference
Justin Jackson	Merrillville	All-District
Ryan Harmelink	Goshen	NLC All-Conference
Isaac Miller	Elkhart Christian	Sectional Runner-Up

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

Player	Team	Position	Award #1	Award #2
Ben Vincent	NorthWood	#2S	NLC All-Conference	All-District
Eric Gaby	Fairfield	#2S	NECC All-Conference
Alex Driscoll	Wabash	#2S	TRC All-Conference
Cooper Travernier	Northridge	#2S	NLC All-Conference (HM)
Evan Witte	Centerville	#2S	TEC All-Conference
Chad Whelan	Chesterton	#2S	Duneland All-Conference
Carlos Lichty	Goshen	#3S	NLC All-Conference
Colin Hochstedler	Fairfield	#3S	NECC All-Conference

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

Player	Team	Position	Award #1	Award #2
Travis Hermon/Nate Slabach	Concord	#1D	NLC All-Conference	All-District
Max Blumentritt/Andrew Sill	St. Joseph	#1D	NIC All-Conference (1st Team)	All-District
Trajan Schwartz/Jack Wysong	NorthWood	#1D	NLC All-Conference (HM)	Indiana All-Star
Brandon Eash/Elijah Hostetler	Westview	#1D	NECC All-Conference
Dane Frieden/Nathan Brekke	Elkhart Central	#1D	NIC All-Conference (1st Team)
Preston Philips/Lucas Flick	Jimtown	#1D	NIC All-Conference (2nd Team)
Kody Brown/Nate Reed	Centerville	#1D	TEC All-Conference
Asif Khan/Jonah France	Wabash	#1D	TRC All-Conference
Carter Kuntz/Chase Butler	Triton	#1D	HNAC All-Conference
Grant Lucchese/Drew McDugle	Concord	#2D	NLC All-Conference
Will Clark/Brady Hostetler	Westview	#2D	NECC All-Conference

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!

Perspective on the 2018 Season #3

"Perspectives" Series
- 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.

Position	Name	2017 Record	2018 Projection	2018 Actual
#1S	Liam Bradford	10-11	10-13	9-13
#2S	Caleb Shenk	2-3	8-14	11-12
#3S	Philip Krabill	1-4	9-14	12-11
#1D	Jonah Farran/Nathan Oostland	12-9 / 12-10	10-13	11-12
#2D	Will Nisley/Tyson Miller	8-5 / 3-12	7-16	12-10

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

	1st Match	2nd Match
#1S	0-6, 0-6	6-7, 2-6
#2S	1-6, 1-6	3-6, 1-6
#3S	2-6, 0-6	6-7, 4-6
#1D	3-6, 4-6	3-6, 3-6
#2D	6-7, 7-6, 3-6	6-4, 3-6, 1-6
TOTAL GAMES	29-67	38-54
PERCENTAGE	30.20%	40.40%

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.

	1st Half of Year	2nd Half of the Year
#1S	GBGGNBBNBBB	GGNGNGGNGG
#2S	BGGNBGNNNBNG	GGBGGGGNGGG
#3S	BGNNBNNNBG	BGGGNNGGGG
#1D	BBGNNNNNGGNB	GNGGNNGGGG
#2D	BBGNNGNNBBNN	BBGNBGNGGG

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. 

Let's keep the improvement rolling!

Perspective on the 2018 Season #2

In the last "Perspective" post, I looked at the team strength of our schedule. Today, we will take a different look at the season. Today, we'll look at how our team performed by position.

HOW WELL DID WE DO AT EACH POSITION?
2018 VARSITY

Position	Record
#1S	9-14
#2S	11-12
#3S	12-11
#1D	11-12
#2D	12-11

So, we were pretty much the same right across the board. Our strongest positions were #3S and #2D. That's awesome. Those have to be strong in order to have a good team. I've often said that teams that win #3S and #2D tend to win the Sectionals. In fact, in 2008 I did a study of the state's Sectionals, and 60 of the 64 Sectional champions won #3S and #2D. In our own Sectional championship seasons, #3S and #2D have had our best records.

Our weakest position, record wise, was #1S. But I've got Liam's back... I've got a post lined up outlining the gauntlet that he had to play at #1S. Suffice it to say, he had to play a talented row of All-District, All-Conference and All-State players.

But at four of our positions, we basically finished with a .500 record. As a team, we finished at 9-11, basically a .500 team.

As a team, our road to getting better is pretty clear: We need to have each position get better. In fact, let's compare to previous seasons to the path to an even better record.

For comparisons sake
2018 VARSITY

Position	Record
#1S	9-14
#2S	11-12
#3S	12-11
#1D	11-12
#2D	12-11

2017 VARSITY

Position	Record
#1S	6-17
#2S	9-14
#3S	7-16
#1D	18-7
#2D	12-11

So, the simple comparison to last year's team is that we improved immensely in every position except for #1D. Although, we were pretty outstanding at #1D last year. What's interesting is that we got better at almost every position while only having 3 varsity players return... and they weren't the ones who had better records. In other words, it was our first year varsity players who posted the best records this year - Philip Krabill, Caleb Shenk, Will Nisley and Tyson Miller. That bodes well heading into next year, because 3 of those 4 return.

Where we've really got to make a jump to get back to an elite status as a tennis program is the win percentage of each position. This year, we were all right around .500. But if we compare that to the last 10 years average...

LAST 10 YEARS AVERAGE

Position	Record
#1S	16-8
#2S	16-8
#3S	15-9
#1D	16-9
#2D	16-8

We can see that over the past 10 years, we've had some stellar tennis players. This year, our average record was like 11-12 while over the past 10 years we've had average records of 16-8! I mean, each position has been impressive, and each position has had stars and down years.

How did these records get so good? What is the difference between the past 10 years and the last two? And how do we get back there again? Well, in each of the last 10 years, from 2007-2017, we had a majority of the varsity taking lessons during the off-season, like 3-4 guys each year. Then, the extra positions of the varsity have been filled in by guys who are athletic and involved in multiple sports. 

Over the past two years, since the Racket Club inconveniently turned into soccer fields and baseball cages, we haven't had as many guys pursuing lessons and such. We've played well over the summer, which has made us a middle of the road team. Getting back to the elite level means spending some extra focus on tennis, either during the offseason or during the summer. 

I'm pretty confident about the guys we have moving up from the JV though. We've got a good crop of young players ready to move in and make their own marks. Let's look at how the JV positions did on the season below.

HOW ABOUT THE JV?
2018 JUNIOR VARSITY TOP 5 POSITIONS

Position	Record
#1SJV	8-6
#2SJV	4-9
#3SJV	4-9
#1DJV	8-7
#2DJV	4-9

So, we can see that our top positions actually posted winning records. That's impressive, and it shows that we are ready to move up and take advantage of the openings on varsity next year. The #2SJV, #3SJV, and #2DJV positions were often played by freshmen this year, giving them good experience and readying them for the leap that it will take to move forward.

And how does this compare to previous JV years? Are we making any progress?

2017 JV TOP 5 POSITIONS

Position	Record
#1SJV	7-11
#2SJV	6-12
#3SJV	3-13
#1DJV	7-10
#2DJV	4-9

You can see that we made significant progress from last year. Each position except for #2SJV had a better record this year than last year. That's also promising, because of the players who achieved these records last year, 3 then moved up and competed well for the varsity (Will, Tyson, and Philip). So in general, things are moving in the right direction :-)

2018 JV OTHER POSITIONS

Position	Record
#4SJV	1-4
#5SJV	0-2
#3DJV	2-6
#4DJV	2-4
#5DJV	0-2

Our lower JV positions didn't fare as well. We actually picked up some wins early in the season, and lost some really close match in these spots late in the season. We showed so much improvement, and we'll just have to play a lot of tennis for these records to improve.

SUMMING IT UP

We made great progress this year, but we want to push up into being a team that consistently wins. In order to do that, each individual position is going to have to win a few more matches on the season. It's what we talked about all year, we are going to be the confident ones who take the shot to win the point, set or match - instead of being tentative and fearful in the big moments. 

As we play more tennis, get used to taking the big shots, and find success... that will translate to more wins. But I was so glad to see us improve each position from last year, and also to watch us improve through the season. How did we improve through the season? Let's look at that in the next post!