A Chilly Defeat at Warner Park.

Before we get into today's match recap, I hope you all have a chance to watch the above video (Parents, make your kids watch it). If you haven't had a chance to watch Gael Monfils (near court) play, then prepare to be amazed. His athleticism aside, what I want all my kids to take away from this video, is that Monfils (pronounced Mon-FEECE) never tries to do too much. Even the winner he hits at the end of the point looks effortless. When he's being chased from side to side, he hits the ball with spin and height and recovers toward the middle of the court. Too many times I see my players trying to do too much when they are off balance. This is not the time to try to hit a winner. Instead, throw up a lob and hope to keep the rally alive. I realize Monfils makes it look easy, but we can all learn something from that point. Okay, enough X's and O's. Here's the recap:

Those weather.com people have no idea what is going to happen do they? Again, the forecast was for a little sunshine today, but I don't think we ever got any. Instead, it was another cloudy, breezy day-- though not quite as cold as yesterday.

We lost to a tough district team today in CSAS, but we also scored some nice victories, and on the Boys' side, we maybe should have had a couple of others. Hats off to Jonathan Craft who won easily in just his second match ever in the number six slot. He and Jae Yoo had their chances, but lost in a tough tiebreaker in the number three doubles slot.

On the girls's side, Candace Cline coasted to an 8-1 victory in the #2 position, but we fell in all the other matches. Please keep Kayla Morgan in your thoughts and prayers this evening, as she had a bit of an issue with her knee and had to retire late in her match. She seemed fine a little while after, and was even asking to play in the doubles, but I decided we needed to err on the side of caution. Thanks to Caroline Daugherty for filling in admirably in the number three doubles position. Caroline got to play an exhibition yesterday against Rhea County, but this was her first real tennis match. Last year I did not have that luxury, you can't know how relieved I am to actually have a bench this year.

I'll keep my eye on the weather, but it does look like we are in for some rain on Wednesday night and Thursday. I'll wait as long as I can before canceling Thursday's match. If we can't play, I'm going to try to get us an indoor court so that we can get some practice in. Well that's it for now.


Here are the results:

CSAS Girls Def. Hixson Girls 8-1

Girls Singles:

Ahmee Kelly (C) def. Allison Cowart 8-3
Candace Cline (H) def. Erin Mournier (C) 8-1
Maria Alley (C) def. Ashton Summers (H) 8-4
Rachel Phillips (C) def. Whitney Clack (H) 8-6
Cindy Ormaza (C) def. Torey Hart (H) 8-0
Hannah Byrne (C) def. Kayla Morgan (H) 7-0 (Ret.)

Girls Doubles:

Kelly/Mournier (C) def. Cowart/Summers (H) 8-0
Alley/Phillips (C) def. Cline/Clack (H) 8-5
Kelsey Williams/Allie Emmett (C) def. Hart/Caroline Daugherty (H) 8-0

CSAS Boys def. Hixson Boys 7-2

Boys Singles:

Ian Derthick (C) def. George Ozborn (H) 8-2
Brian Wright (C) def. Dylan Millwood (H) 8-6
Alex Evers (C) def. Eric Barr (H) 8-1
Raja Moughrabi (C) def. Corey Phillips 8-4
Sam Kret (C) def. Jae Yoo 8-4
Jonathan Craft (H) def. Matt Collum 8-1

Boys Doubles:

Derthick/Wright (C) def. Millwood/Barr (H) 8-5
Ozborn/Phillips (H) def. Evers/Moughrabi (C) 8-7 (7-2)
Chandler Custer/Reymon Kim (C) def. Yoo/Craft (H) 8-7 (7-4)