ITA Small College National Championship

One of the fun things about traveling is the sense adventure. Playing tennis has provided Whitman players (and myself) a great opportunity to explore new parts of the country. This week I was lucky enough to travel to Mobile, AL with Conor and Andrew as well as Coach John, Alyssa Roberg and Elise Otto of the women's team. Because of the nature of tennis scheduling we really never to get travel or play at the same time as the Women's team. It was a special treat traveling and hanging out as a group.

The trip to Mobile was certainly an adventure -- especially for our talented freshman Andrew La Cava. Prior to the trip Andrew spend almost the entire week in the Whitman health center or the ER. Unfortunately he caught some bug and had a temperature of 103.6. Needless to say he was down and out for the entire week prior to the trip. By the end of the week I was worried if he was going to be able to make the trip. Luckily by Sunday he was feeling well enough to check out of the health center and get in a few practice sessions.

We are very fortunate that Whitman's October break is the same week as the tournament. Since there are no classes on Monday or Tuesday there is a bit less academic stress surrounding the tournament. Still a lot for the players to manage but something that is doable. Our trip started very early Tuesday morning as we all met at 4am to drive to Pasco for our 6am flight. As usual all the players carried their tennis bags onto the flight. As we boarded the jet the players dropped their bags off on the Ala Cart luggage rack and away we went to Denver. At Denver we got off the jet and waited for the racket bags to come off the Ala Cart rack. We watched as the bags unloaded the plane (and sat in the rain) and then were reloaded into the plane! As we were sitting at the gate Coach John ran back down the jet way to find out why the bags were put back on the plane. Apparently this is something you aren't suppose to do as the gate agent started running after him yelling, and I'm not kidding, "Jimmin Christmas you can go back on the plane!"

We made it to New Orleans but unfortunately our bags didn't. Too make matters even worse there was no way to track our bags since they weren't checked. The nice United travel person said they would probably be in on the 6pm flight. Since it was only 1pm and we wanted to get to Mobile to hit we split up: I drove all the players to Mobile (about 2.5 hours) and Coach John stayed behind for the tennis bags.

Once we were at Mobile we had to deal with the logistics of hitting without tennis equipment. We ended up demoing some rackets from the local tennis shop, buying a couple pairs of shoes, borrowing a pair of shoes (luckily Coach John and Andrew have the same shoe size), and borrowing some clothing (I had my bag of tennis stuff). It was very cool to see how the players handled this situation. They had fun with the situation and ended up having a pretty good hit that evening. To finish off our day of adventure Coach John called saying all our stuff had arrived and he was on the road to Mobile.

On Wednesday we had play-in matches against the singles and doubles winner of the Texas region. Since the ITA has Texas and the PNW making up a section (strange geographic mix) the two regional winners playoff to make the final 8. In the morning Andrew faced off against Bobby Cocanougher who is an experienced senior from Trinity. In the first set Andrew forced an early break going up 3-1. At that point the Trinity senior raised his level of play to reel off 6 straight games going up 6-3, 1-0 (up a break). Big props to our freshman he didn't get discouraged and battled hard taking the 2nd set 6-4. The 3rd set went down to the wire. Andrew was serving at 5-5 and had an unfortunate game: second guessed a volley and pushed it long, missed an overhead that was in the sun, a net cord winner from his opponent and he was broken. Cocanougher served out the match for a hard fought 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 victory.

After an hour break Andrew team-up with Conor Holton-Burke to face Cocanougher and Kowal of Trinity. We knew this was going to be a tough match -- Cocanougher/Kowal have played together for 4-years and had great results. In fact last year they lost in the NCAA doubles final and two years ago they lost in the semi-finals. Going into the year they are the undisputed #1 doubles team in DIII. In the first set the Trinity duo outplayed Andrew/Conor -- they several chances to break Conor/Andrew (in fact in one game Conor served at 0-40) and the closest we got to break was one game that went to 30-30. Then a funny thing happened in the tiebreaker: we ripped off 6 straight points and took the 1st set 7-6. The second set was a reversal of the 1st. Now we were holding serve easy and having break points. In fact Andrew/Conor broke pretty early in the match to go up 3-2. They held that lead through the set and Andrew served for the match 5-3. The Trinity guys rose to the challenge nailing returns and broke at love. Just like the 1st set the 2nd set came down to a tiebreak. We had a match point on Trinity's serve at 5-6 in the breaker but missed the return. However we won the next point going up 7-6 with Conor serving. Our guys play I, Conor nails a big 1st serve, and Andrew moves to intercept the weak reply with a forehand volley and then a funny thing happened -- he carved the ball too fine and misses the volley. With new life the Trinity team wins the next two points stealing the set and more importantly the momentum. In the 3rd set match breaker the Trinity duo went up a mini-break early and never looked back winning 10-6. Tough, tough match with the Trinity team escaping with a 6-7, 7-6, 10-6 win.

Obviously Andrew/Conor are disappointed losing that match. However I have to say that it was one of the best doubles matches I've seen. Both teams played great pushing each other to great heights. Also great to see the wonderful sportsmanship displayed by both teams. Not sure about the Trinity team but I know Andrew/Conor felt like they had made new friends after that doubles match. My feelings about the doubles match were confirmed when Mr Kowal came over and told me that he has been watching DIII tennis for almost 4 years and that was the best DIII doubles match he had ever seen.

I should mention that yesterday the Trinity team won the DIII title knocking off Emory's #1 team 6-2, 6-2 in the finals. We wish them the best of luck in the Super Bowl play off this weekend.

Even though we dropped two close matches I, and the players, come away from the ITA's with the belief we can compete with anyone in DIII. I know this experience will prime the pump of passion and drive our guys to work hard this off season. Even though we lost 7 seniors to graduation I feel the Fighting Squirrels will have a special year.