Team takes big strides to clinching 4th straight NWC title.

This past weekend was a special and unique coaching weekend. Yes the team went 3-0 and moved one step closer to one of our goals of winning the NWC title. But more interesting was that my 8 year old daughter made the road trip with the team to Portland. I honestly can't remember seeing her so excited (with the exception of Christmas). All week all she could talk about was going on a trip with the team. When I woke her up Friday morning she jumped out of bed and rushed upstairs to start her morning because it was the big day. Was a lot of fun watching the team interact with her -- she had 12 big brothers who were willing to playing catch, run around after her, and/or carrying her around. It was a weekend she will remember for a long time!

Crazy bit of conference scheduling. Saturday we played Pacific in Forest Grove, OR and then had to return home to play Whitworth on Sunday. Actually we played Whitworth twice on Sunday as we made up an earlier match that was canceled due to poor roads. Thanks to coach Shanks for agreeing to play a double-header in Walla Walla to make up that postponed match.

Saturday we played the much improved Boxer team. Over the past few years Coach Jackson has done an amazing job turning around the Boxers. I remember a few years ago they were the worst team in the conference: now they are among of the best. In fact on Friday they dropped a heartbreaking 5-4 loss to Willamette (#2 team in the conference).

Against Pacific I felt the need to mix up our doubles line-up. We have been rock solid at #1 and #2 but haven't been as sharp at #3. To give both Matt and Quin a boost I paired Quin with Conor at #2 doubles and Matt with Andrew at #3 doubles. This allowed Jeff and ET the opportunity to play #1 doubles. Even though we won 8-3, 8-4, 8-3 all the matches were much closer than the score. Lots of long games and competitive points. Honestly looking back at the match I'm surprised the doubles scores weren't closer. I guess that is the funny thing about tennis..a few keys points here and there can determine the outcome.

The momentum from doubles carried over into the singles and we rolled through without dropping a set. The most competitive match of the day was #1 where Conor defeated Pacific's #1 player Troy Zuroske 6-4, 6-3. After our first conference match of the year I wrote this about Zuroske:

"Our only loss was at #3 singles where Jeff ran into a buzz-saw freshman Troy Zuroske. Troy played great tennis hammering huge serves all match. His serve coupled with the strange lighting made for a rough day for Jeff. I wouldn't be surprised to see Zuroske playing #1 for the Boxers in the next fews. After watching him play today I'm convinced he will be one of the top players in the NWC Conference"

And, yes, Zuroske has turned into one of the top players in the conference. In fact his only conference losses this year have been at #1 against Willamette and Whitman. He will certainly be a force in the conference for the next few years.

Whitman 9 Pacific 1

On Sunday we played a pretty unique format against Whitworth. The past couple years we have traditionally played an A team and B team against each other. Since the weather was beautiful we played the A team match outdoors and the B team match indoors. Its not often that all 12 players get the opportunity to play at the same time.

Between the two matches we only dropped 1 match. Match of the day goes to Jeff Tolman who was down 2-6, 1-3 before rallying to win 2-6, 6-4, 10-7.

After the weekend we are now 10-0 in conference and play our last two matches against two teams we beat earlier in the year (PLU 7-2, UPS 8-1). If we win both matches we will be 2011 NWC Champions, earn the #1 seed at the NWC conference tournament (only the top 4 teams make the tournament), and most importantly get to host the conference tournament.

Here is a link to photos from the weekend. Unfortunately half of the matches over the weekend were played indoors (Pacific's covered courts or our indoor courts) and I only took pictures of the outdoor matches. There are some pretty sweet pictures of the team at Multnomah Falls.