April 4 & 5 - Hixson Boys Play in The Rotary!

In January, I enquired about getting into the prestigious Rotary Tournament, which has been going strong for over 50 years here in Chattanooga.  Our team was immediately put on the waiting list and a few weeks later, I got an email informing me that one of the teams had dropped out, and asking me if Hixson be interested.  I'm pretty sure everyone in my neighborhood heard my emphatic "YESS!" upon reading that email. Of course, I still had to get approval from our school, and actually reply in the affirmative, but that was the moment that I realized that people were starting to take this team seriously.

The first part of our schedule was pretty demanding, and after barely getting by Chattanooga Christian, we had two set backs: a tough 5-4 loss to Signal Mountain and an awful 7-2 loss to Notre Dame.  Neither of those teams are in our District, but I told our boys that if they played like that at the Rotary, they would not be in for a fun weekend.

Friday, April 4 finally came, and it was a rainy mess.  Luckily, our draw was at McCallie and we managed to get all the matches in on Friday thanks to their lovely new indoor facility (pictured below), and a short match format.

We only had one win in the first round, Carl Phillips at #4 Singles, but I thought everyone played well.  Kevin Nguyen, Richard Vuong, Ethan Gossett and Rivers De'Friese all lost in third set tiebreakers. So we had our chances.

We ended up with two doubles teams in the Consolation finals: Carl Phillips & Kevin Nguyen won their final, and Ethan Gossett & Rivers De'Friese lost.  We also had three singles players in the consolation finals, but could not manage to get a win.  Still the valuable match experience that Ethan, Rivers and Kevin got in that consolation final cannot be over-stated.

As a team we finished sixth out of eight teams, tied with Signal Mountain.  Our kids learned a lot, and  hopefully understand what it takes to win at the next level.  I'm proud of them, and hope we get to come back to this tournament next year.  We should only lose one player from this group, so heading into this tournament next year, we might surprise a few more folks.