Update from Aiken Day 2

Greetings back from Rock Hill!

I am back from the South Aiken High School Invitational after a good
weekend of tennis with fantastic weather and wonderful facilities. I
stuck around to watch the final between South Aiken A and Spartanburg
in which Spartanburg won the tournament with a 4-3 victory clinched by
a 6-2,6-4 1st doubles win.

An interesting nugget about Spartanburg is that their #1 player has a
severe shoulder muscle pull and was unable to serve overhand or hit any
overheads. He went undefeated in both singles and doubles all weekend
with his underhand-spin serve and didn't drop a set or even get forced
into a tiebreaker. In the three matches of his that I witnessed he had
no double faults either while serving underhand. He's a pretty
impressive player.

The team and attending parents along with myself enjoyed a delicious
BBQ dinner at Woodside Plantation Country Club last night. The dining
room was second to none in presentation (table napkins in school colors
was my favorite touch) and the food was right up there too.

We met back at the hotel after dinner and had a meeting to go over the
details for Saturday. Then we had a competitive game of Cranium with
the teams of Zimmerman/Fitzpatrick/Sabin/Sabisch taking on
Beaver/Das/Russell/Wade. The latter took home the crown as current
team Cranium champions.

We arose early this morning to get a good hotel breakfast and departed
to take on Blythewood High in our first match. Blythewood is a strong
team that had been defeated by a very good South Aiken A team in a
tight match the night before.

We lost the overall match 2-4. Winning individual matches were Zach
"Thunder" Beaver at 4 singles in a runaway 6-0,6-2. Also, our 2nd
Doubles team of Brian Fitzpatrick & Sudeep Das won a close one. Their
first set could have gone either way and they scrapped out a 7-5 win
and finished very strong in the second set 6-2. Blythewood has
extremely strong, experienced 1, 2, and 3 singles players and they made
fairly quick work of us in those positions. Paul Sabisch filled in at
5 singles to play left-handed and fell, in a
closer-than-the-score-shows, 0-6,2-6.

Our last match of the day was for 7th place in the tournament after
suffering back to back defeats. We faced the South Aiken High B Team
who had been brought in as filler due to a last minute back out of the
tournament by Spring Valley. We decided to play with our lineup a
little bit since we had nothing to lose in this match. Our lineup for
this match got all 8 traveling players in the match and ended up being
just enough to win in the end.

Zimmerman made quick work at 1 singles with a 6-0,6-3 victory featuring
strong service games and quick rallies ending in a lot of winners for
him. "Thunder" Beaver faced a streaky South Aiken player, who probably
would be on their A team with better consistency on his serve, and fell
3-6, 2-6 at 2 singles. Sabisch played a nail biter first set to a
score of 5-7, but then his opponent's eyes were unfocused from the
bright orange cast on Paul's right arm and pulled away 2-6.
Fitzpatrick won in quick fashion at 4 singles by a score of 6-0,6-2 and
had enough energy left over to win a pro-set against another South
Aiken reserve after his match. Eric Sabin dropped a close straight set
match at 5 singles with a 4-6,4-6 result. Our 2 doubles team featured
our unique combination of Seth Russell and Das who extinguished their
opponents 6-2,6-4.

It all came down to 1 doubles with the score tied at 3 matches a piece. Zimmerman and Drayton Wade teamed up to take on the South Aiken B's 1
& 2 players. Behind strong serving from both Jeff and Drayton as well
as good strategy, they clinched the 4-3 victory for us by a score of
6-4,6-2.

Recapping the weekend's results, individual records were:

Zimmerman 1-2 singles, 2-0 doubles
Russell 0-2 singles, 2-0 doubles
Wade 0-2 singles, 1-0 doubles
Beaver 2-1 singles
Sabin 1-1 singles
Sabisch 0-2 singles
Das 3-0 doubles
Fitzpatrick 1-0 singles, 2-0 doubles

match results were:

Aiken High defeated Northwestern 3-4
Blythewood defeated Northwestern 2-4
Northwestern defeated South Aiken B 4-3

I would have to say that I was extremely pleased with the three wins at
2 doubles and 2 wins at 1 doubles. We haven't spent an incredible
amount of time on doubles strategy up to this point in practice, so
going undefeated in our doubles matches was something to be excited
about. Also, "Thunder" Beaver got some big wins in singles with his
unique "I can out-rally a wall" style of play. He faced opponents all
weekend that were probably more skilled tennis-wise, but they were
unable to keep the ball in play for 20-30 swings per rally like Zach
could and he wore them all down point by point. Fitzpatrick & Das were
a good combo together and apart as both went undefeated for the
weekend.

That all being said, I look forward to getting back to practice Monday
and addressing some areas of opportunity. We open the region schedule
against Lancaster on Tuesday at home. We have to focus on every
individual match in region to make sure we capitalize on as many as we
can.

Go Trojans!

Oh, and in case you were wondering how I got the nickname "Thunder" for
Zach it was from the most comical moment of the weekend for me
personally. Zach was facing match point from his opponent from South
Aiken down 0-6, 2-5. I was walking back from the 2 doubles court when
I saw Zach laughing and talking to the players that were watching his
match. He assumed his service return position & his opponent smacked a
hard first serve at his forehand. As Zach wound up to take his hardest
swing of the weekend, he let out a yell of "THUNDER!" before ripping
the return shot that sailed out to the left. Even his opponent
couldn't stop from laughing.