Tennis Anyone?

So you might have noticed I have been pretty much absent from the blog world here lately, and there is a good explanation(at least I think so) I have been up to my eyeballs with tennis!  For those that don't know I am the coach of a high school girls varsity tennis team, and when the calendar flips to March my life goes into complete tennis mode.  I have been doing this job for a long time now, and I have to say it's quite reward I love working with the girls, watching them grow as tennis players, and getting to know them as people.  I went into this season not exactly sure what to expect you see we had the school's best ever season last year posting the best ever won loss record, winning our second ever sectional, first ever regional, and my top player was 4th in the state in singles however 6 of the girls that started on that team graduated and the 7th was coming off tearing her ACL so this year I knew one thing we would be young and inexperienced.  I have taken a lot of pride in building our program up, when I took over the job 11 years ago they had never had a winning season, and my first few years were frustrating because that didn't change, and I was wanting to win more than the girls.  However, 5 years ago that all changed when the incoming Freshmen were not only studs, but they were winners and fought for every point, and now we are going on our 5th straight winning season, and this year turned out to be pretty damn special. 

This year's team was a young team, but man they were hungry to win we started out the year playing a Freshman at 1 singles, Sophomores at 2 and 3 singles, my only Seniors at 1 doubles, and a Sophomore and Junior at 2 doubles and 6 of those girls had never played varsity before.  We started out our season 0-2 and I thought that might happen considering the nerves and having so many rookies but we got it turned around.  We went to an invite in mid April one we had never won before and brought home the first place trophy, and that was when I realized I had another contender.  Every year though we hit a wall, it's odd our season goes by so fast however teams always hit a wall, and when we hit ours it was with a MAJOR thud.  We had a lot of in fighting on the team, some drama with the two Seniors, and the only way I thought to get them out of was to be frank and told them to get their heads out of their asses and play tennis!   The scary part this slump happened right before the post season, thankfully we went to a tournament the Saturday before our sectional started and man it was like a completely different team we lost in the final but we played great.

That momentum carried into this past week which was the start of our state tournament run, which starts with sectionals.  While the IHSAA(governing body of HS sports) ruined high school basketball here by going to class tennis is a 1 class sport and our sectional is at a school 5x the size of us.  We went in as defending champs, but it was definitely a wide open tournament.  In the first round we got a very easy 4-1 win and that was great beacuse it got the jitters out, then came the semi finals.  We had to face a team that was really strong, who we had already beaten 5-0, and had changed their line up.  It was a tense battle, but we prevailed 4-1 and headed to our 4th straight championship appearance.  We took on the Kats a school that is 5x the size of us, and absolutely hate losing to us farm kids.  I was so nervous going into this match and in the end I shouldn't have been my young inexperienced team played like seasoned veterans, we got 3 points very quickly and defended our title.  We play again Tuesday in the regional against the #2 team in the state not expecting much but hey we got there!

So 2012 season ended up being one of my most satisfying, now the pressure is really on to see if we can three peat!!  Enjoy a couple of pictures here, I always reward the girls after winning by tumbling on the tennis courts I am mid backhandspring here. 

Also I promised the girls if we won they could dump our water jug on me here the Seniors are ready to go they look to eager, and I pissed them off because I moved like a chicken haha