Northwestern falls to Clover 2-5

In a heartbreaker of a match, we fell to the Eagles of Clover tonight 5-2. With the loss Northwestern drops to 5-3 overall and 4-1 in region.

Highlighting the effort for Northwestern was Jeff Zimmerman's performance at 1 singles. Jeff stormed out to a 6-0 first set and seemed to have it on cruise control. He must have tapped the brakes at the beginning of set 2 as cruise control came off when he and the Clover opponent traded games all the way to 6-6 to force a tiebreaker in the second set. Jeff fell behind 4-1 in the tiebreak, but came back with strong serves and a mini-break to get to 5-4 and finished the tiebreak out for our first line win.

Unfortunately, we dropped lines 2, 3, and 4 in fairly decissive fashion. Seth Russell dropped a 2-6, 2-6 decision at 2 singles. Alex Atzberger and Zach Beaver lost by identical 6-1, 6-0 scores at 3 and 4 singles respectively.

Here is where decision time came for me as coach. On 2 doubles, I could see that Brian Fitzpatrick & Eric Sabin had just come back to win their second set 6-4 after dropping the first 7-5. At the same time, I was watching Drayton Wade as he was down in the second set 4-5 and bordering on a split set situation as well unless he could pull off the second set with a comeback. I hoped that I could cheer Drayton on to a comeback win in the second and still make it over to the doubles match to pull for Brian & Eric.

Drayton had played an excellent first set and won it 6-3. The second set had see-sawed back and forth and the Clover opponent took the second set 6-7 in a close tiebreak. On to yet another 10-point tiebreak went Drayton at this point to decide his match. My update from doubles was that we were down big, so it was not looking good for us at this point. Drayton's tiebreak 3rd set was handled by him in stellar fashion. Drayton went up 4-1 before dropping a point for a 4-2 score at the changeover. That would prove to be the last time Drayton would change sides as he claimed the next 6 points to close out our second point 10-2.

The doubles match with Brian and Eric had ended by this point with us dropping the match 5-7, 6-4, 1-10 to clinch the 4th point for Clover.

Seth had been on stand-by waiting to play doubles with Jeff if we had a decisive point to play out at 1 doubles. Being that the match was decided, I sent Seth off to his band concert where Alex was already and paired up Thunder Beaver with Jeff to have some fun playing doubles. Clover paired their #1 with their #3 as an opponent. For those of you that got to see Alex's match at 3 singles, you could probably foresee an enjoyable scenario unwinding....The battle of the underhand serves. Zach has been working on an underhand heavy spin serve that he throws in every now and then and Clover's #3 has a similar shot in his bag.

I was pleased that we were competitive in the 1 doubles line even though we lost it fairly big 8-4. Seeing as Zach has never played doubles and Jeff was playing with an unfamiliar partner, I think there is potential if the two need to be paired in the future.

The Trojans will remain at home to take on Fort Mill on Thursday. Fort Mill is currently ranked #10 in the state and has been impressive in region matches without dropping a point yet. We'll hit the courts tomorrow (or mini-gym at 4:45 if rain) to strategize how we're going to attack them and have at it Thursday.

Go Trojans!

Box Score:

1S: Jeff Zimmerman (N) def Chase Altieri (C) 6-0, 7-6
2S: Nick Deahl (C) def Seth Russell (N) 6-2, 6-2
3S: Ken Long (C) def Alex Atzberger (N) 6-1, 6-0
4S: Will Decker (C) def Zach Beaver (N) 6-1, 6-0
5S: Drayton Wade (N) def Josh Watts (C) 6-3, 6-7, 10-2
1D: Altieri/Long (C) def Zimmerman/Beaver (N) 8-4
2D: Tucker DeLoach/J.C. Dougherty (C) def Brian Fitzpatrick/Eric Sabin(N) 5-7, 6-4, 10-1