Kevin Tennis Photos

 

One of the other tennis Mom’s took a bunch of photos of each kid at the Holt meet…..didn’t see them online until this week and grabbed the best ones of Kevin to be used here at BNS.

If I had one wish for Kevin’s tennis next year, is that he would continue to improve his serve.  His first serve is good and would be great with another 5 to 10 mph on it, but, I think he double-faults way too often (once a match would be ok, but, it’s more than that).

He’s had a good year though…pretty consistent on his serve and not a lot of big swings up and down. 

I was pretty impressed with his ground strokes though; he did a great job of grabbing those shots that are way back at the end line and returning them, and not just returning them but driving them back cross court so that the other team was back at the end line as well. 

With a scrimmage (maybe) left, there are three meets to go, CAAC Champions Meet next Saturday, Regionals, and then States….

I am sure if Kevin’s coach for his private lessons could see this he would not be happy; it is the biggest problem with Kevin’s form that he has…he should be lower with his racket and his arm should be extended more out at the elbow.  Hitting the ball like he must have done here is all arms and no legs…no power and little control. 

Anyway, they should most likely finish first at CAAC Champions (both in their flight and as a team).  And most likely finish second in regionals (both in their flight and as a team).  Finishing 2nd will certainly qualify them for States.

States could be a bracket of as many as 32 teams, the top six teams of which are seeded.  In reality, last year there were 18 teams with 14 byes handed out in the first round.  I would look at winning one match at States as being awesome, and anything after that is a huge bonus.

The draw is somewhat random (if you get a seed, you are placed away from the other seeds) so it really will come down to who they get in Round 1.  I would guess they would be fine against any unseeded team and have a chance against 5, or 6.  Having to face 1, 2,, 3, or 4 in the first round would make me think we are looking at an early exit.  But, they have to do well in Regionals to get there…

Kevin does get to a lot of balls…..and often makes pretty decent returns from awkward positions. 

They beat Holt 6-0, 6-1….I think this team finished 3rd in our league…

Here’s hoping the handshakes are happy ones for Ross and Kevin for the foreseeable future….

From the Sports Desk

 

A quiet quiet quiet weekend around here.  Only Matthew and Kevin in this report.

Matthew:  Lost 24-22 to Holt. 

You can click on this picture to watch all of the Matthew highlights:

If you just want the two best highlights, click on the next picture:

This game had it all, highs, low, controversy.  Glad the team played better than last week.  Glad they played more than well enough to win.  They also played poorly enough to lose.

Suzanne brought the camera and took a bunch of photos during the game while I videotaped.  Matthew continued his kicking duties and crushed a lot of kickoffs…..one kickoff bounced all the way to the 10-yard line; wish our coverage was a little bit better, a lot of these good kicks went to waste.

The team is divided up into a RED team and a WHITE TEAM; Matthew is a linebacker and fullback for the red team….

But, since some teams are just bigger than us, the coaches have made a PINK team.  They’ve stated that it’s the biggest players on the two teams, and that’s true I guess.  It’s also the best players on the two teams.  Matthew plays tight end on this team, and you can see above, he’s playing defensive end.

Matthew likes when he is a defensive end and the other team puts the tight end on the other side of the field…..a free shot at the quarterback.  And this was a good play EXCEPT for the tackle, which isn’t low, and the qb spins away from him after a second or two.  Matthew does hold him long enough for the rest of the team to show up for a five yard loss….

Two pictures from one run that didn’t go well….no hole in the line means it’s hard to even get a yard (and I think that’s what he got here, one yard).

They were winning 8-0 at the half, we scored, and Matthew missed this extra point, so, it was 8-6.  We never got those two points back throughout the game.  What happened?  Matthew said afterwards he thought it wasn’t a good hold, but, watching the tape, that’s not the case…he just mishit it (ball hit the line, wasn’t even close…)

This is the next kickoff…I think he was a little mad because he crushed it; this is the one that bounces back to the 10.

Picture 1 of 9:  Matthew only has two plays for him when he is full back; 31 dive and 32 dive, simple runs right up the middle…

Picture 2 of 9:  Sometimes a hole is not there, he can either hit that hole and see what he can get or try and kick it outside.  He has been encouraged by his coaches to just hit the hole and see what he can get.  He has had some success doing both.  All of that doesn’t matter here; his teammates opened up a huge hole!

Picture 3 of 9:  Matthew is past the line and cutting right..the two linebackers are coming up to tackle him.

Picture 4 of 9:  They have him.  But, they, like Matthew earlier, make the mistake that 90% of the kids make on every tackle at this level…..they are too high.

Picture 5 of 9:  And if you are high, and the guy you are trying to tackle is big and good, you might not make the tackle, even if there are two of you.  Or even three of you, as the one safety is going to come up since the linebackers aren’t getting it done. 

Picture 6 of 9:  The safety, in the end, isn’t a lot of help.  Matthew is moving away from the linebackers at this point and the safety, while he hits Matthew low, does not wrap up…and Matthew is strong enough to break that tackle and the safety now stops/trips the linebackers so Matthew is able to pull away…

Picture 7 of 9:  Matthew pulling away. 

Picture 8 of 9:  The wide receiver makes a nice block to get one guy chasing Matthew…

Picture 9 of 9:  But Matthew is built for rugged fullback type play and has slowly evolved away from being very speedy (he is fast, but, certainly not the fastest).  And the safety catches him 55 yards down the field…

Picture 1 of 7:  Matthew’s other big play came from the tight end position; a tight end reverse.  They ran it early in the game and didn’t get much…any kind of penetration along the line really screws things up since Matthew travels so close to the line….

Picture 2 of 7:  But, the line was awesome again here…you can see one Holt guy getting pancaked!  The two running backs have hit the two guys on the end, and Matthew is cutting back upfield into this huge hole.

Picture 3 of 7:  So, yeah, it’s easy to rack up big gains when there is absolutely nobody in front of you.  The line of scrimmage was the 25 so Matthew, for all of his running across the formation, is only now back at the line of scrimmage.

Picture 4 of 7:  Big hole means a big gain…

Picture 5 of 7:  Nobody even touches Matthew until….

Picture 6 of 7: …he’s at least 8 yards downfield….

Picture 7 of 7:  And you can see the horde of Holt players really on him at the 15.  The sweetest part of this play is he dragged this pile another 5 yards to the 10.  We scored on the next play.

We had our chances to win, but man, I’ve seen some bad refs in soccer and can’t recall being as mad about the refs as I was at the end of this game.  Every time we would line up to go “hurry-up” on offense the ref would make us stop and wait for the defense.  Twice we didn’t wait, he through a flag!  One was for delay of game(!) the second one was for an illegal shift, you literally can call illegal shift on every play at this level…somebody is moving a little bit.  Unbelievable…let the kids play. 

Kevin:  Went with the tennis team to Holly for the Holly Invitational……eight teams, each flight in a 8-team bracket.  So, basically quarterfinals, semi-finals, and final matches, with consolation games as necessary.

Match 1:  Beat Grand Blanc 6-0, 6-0.  I thought that all of these teams at this invite were pretty good so not sure what to think of this.  Kevin, always optimistic, said that Ross and him just played awesome….which has to be true to win –0 and –0.

Match 2:  Lost to Midland Dow 7-5, 6-2.  A better showing than Kevin and Parth made 2 months back and Kevin says (to him at least) that it was closer than it looked, especially in the second set…he says a lot of the games went to deuce before being decided.  I guess it’s progress.

Match 3:  Beat Rochester Adams 6-3, 7-5 to finish in 3rd place.

Order

 

No matter what I do I can’t fix the order of the last two posts; so…..

The dual against East Lansing was on Tuesday….

The Leagues were yesterday, Thursday……

Tennis – District Dual #5

 

This is the big one; the only other team in the area that might be able to give us trouble this year….

Not so much.

Had to drive down to Dayton for the day, so, missed my chance to go and watch.  Kevin reports the close first set was more of Ross and him not playing well as opposed to the opponents taking it to them.  Says they settled down some in the second set.  Would only admit to double-faulting once…..

Tennis – Leagues

We’ve fallen behind here at BNS, so, let’s summarize last weekend’s sports on the Fric and Frac front and hope we get to it later

Football:  Cpher lost 22-6, Matthew lost 28-0.  Brutal.

Soccer:  Tied 5-5.  Same kid scored all five goals against us.  Brutal.

Yesterday was Leagues, the Capital Area Conference Blue Division Championships.  Kevin and Ross are the #1 seed in the 4 doubles flight




It wasn’t easy, but Kevin and Ross finish the day as League Champions.  Okemos had all 8 flights (1-4 singles and 1-4 doubles) in the finals and won 5 of them to take the League team title as well.
Game 1 against Jackson was a blow out…..Kevin and Ross played well and the other team didn’t.  The only game that Jackson won was more because of unforced errors on Kevin and Ross’s part then brilliance on Jackson’s part….

Game 2 (and the League final) against EL was a battle….because Kevin and Ross made a ton (a ton!) of unforced errors.  Battled through the ugliness to win the first set 6-4 (one of Kevin’s service game he could not get his first serve in….and one or two double faults got them into trouble and they were at deuce forever until Kevin’ service game finally came around and they were able to win the game.
But man, the unforced errors and poor serves buried them in the second set….they got down 5-1 before finally getting untracked (and they made it 5-4 before losing 6-4).  Just brutal to watch……
But the good play that happened at the end of the second set carried over to the third set…they broke the EL serve once, and then again, and cruised to a 6-2 third set win.

(another trophy for the trophy case at the high school…..I wonder what they do with the old ones…)

(Kevin and Ross…not sure why Kevin is hugging his racket here…)

The story from the paper:

EAST LANSING — For the entire CAAC Blue boys tennis season, Okemos has been just ahead of East Lansing and Holt.
That continued to play out on Thursday, as the league held its conference meet at East Lansing High School.
The Chiefs took three of the four doubles championships and added two singles titles to prevail over their two closest conference challengers. The Trojans and the Rams tied for second.
“I’m really proud of the team. I think we worked really hard today. We’ve been working really hard for a while,” Okemos coach Chris S. said. “We’ve just been working on communication and doubles strategy, and just working as a team and getting the points we need.”
The Chiefs won this season despite losing several players from their 2011 team, which finished fifth at the Division 2 state finals.
Herschel A. and Ashton H. won at No. 1 doubles, Ritwik B. and Steven W. won at No. 2 and Ross L. and Kevin H. won at No. 4 for the Chiefs.
Jordan J. and Nikhil P. were league champion at No. 2 and No. 4 singles, respectively.
Junior No. 1 singles player Elan D. reached the final in his flight for Okemos, but fell to Eric D. of East Lansing in three sets after winning the first set.
“Every sport we have a rivalry. Tennis, they always beat us. We beat them my sophomore year but they’ve killed us every other time. This is my first one on Okemos in awhile and it just feels really good,” DeWitt said.
The pair faced one another for the first time of the season last week, but Dntus defaulted, leading to the winner-take-all match in the CAAC meet.
“It was a great feeling to know that I would get to go up to him again,” DWitt said. “I lost the first set, it was close, but then I just kind of kept going, won the second set 7-5 and then I saw it and I went for it. … I was playing a little tentative and letting him take some big shots when I would kind of back off playing too defensive and he’d get it to the corners. He hits it really deep and he keeps it in, so I knew I would have to step it up and match that.”
The Rams finished off a strong league campaign, which featured yet another tie with East Lansing after the two played to a 4-4 draw during their regular-season match.
Holt has now finished second in the CAAC Blue two consecutive seasons.
“I took this job six years ago and we weren’t even in the discussion and even in that stratosphere. We finished behind Everett my first year and they don’t even have a program anymore,” Holt coach Russ O. said. “We’re not that far removed from that and to be at (Okemos and East Lansing’s) level and competing with them, that means a lot. It means a lot to our guys and a lot to our program.”
“To a lot of people, it was a surprise that we’ve been good, but we knew all along that we could be successful, not only at my flight but as a team, too,” Jason D. said after beating Mazen O. of Okemos to secure the No. 3 singles title for the Rams. “I believe there’s no question or no doubt in my mind that we’re with East Lansing and Okemos now.”

MHSAA regionals for boys tennis begin on Oct. 11.

Tennis – District Dual #4

 

Both Lansing schools, Sexton and Eastern, came to Okemos for this meet; we divided our varsity team in two and brought up JV and the back end (non-playing) of the varsity roster for the meet.  Not sure why the Eastern score didn’t end up in the paper, but, glad that the Sexton one did….both were the 8-0 routs that were expected. 

Former Kevin-doubles partners Trey, Henry, and Parth all appear in this box score; Kevin and Ross end up playing 2 doubles. 

Tennis – District Dual #3

 

Maybe the best sign of how different this tennis team is compared to past editions; matches against Holt should be 8-0 wins.  Oh well. 

Kevin says, obviously, that he played well.  He says this whether they win or lose though.   I specifically asked if he double faulted; only once was the answer.  Apparently Ross has a better (harder) first serve than Kevin but isn’t as consistent as Kevin in getting it in. 

Next match Thursday, I doubt they’ll play though….the match is against a Lansing-city school/schools and I don’t think they can field a team….we typically have our JV play them.

From the Sports Desk – The Rest of the Weekend

 

(should have mentioned it in the last post….if you click on the picture of Matthew for football you will go to the video highlights)

Kevin:  Had a dual meet with Brother Rice….they played ‘college’ format, 8 game sets and everyone played doubles and everyone played singles.

So Kevin was the #11 singles and lost 8-1, and he teamed with Ross and lost 8-3.  No one from Okemos won either singles or doubles; Kevin said that Ross and he were the first team to even take 3 games off of the Brother Rice #4 doubles team all year.  So there’s that (file under: victory, pyrrhic).

Matthew:  Three soccer games, one Saturday, two Sunday….

We won 7-0.  Probably could have been twelve, the Tiger goalie  was awesome (and yes, that’s a weird thing to say when he gave up seven goals, but, it could have been a lot more)

We (the team) are playing in the second U11 division again this year.  We thought, and requested, to move back up to the first division, but…..for reasons that will remain a mystery to me (and us...) we weren’t moved up.  Even though we went 8-0 in the spring.

The solution to this ‘problem’ is that we need to beat these teams, and beat them convincingly.  So, we accomplished that goal on Saturday.

This picture is the third of a series…Matthew takes a shot and we think, based on this picture, he has even started to celebrate, but, the goalie makes one of his sevnty-bazillion awesome saves….

We played this team last weekend, beat them 8-3. 

So, yeah, between football and soccer, Saturday was a good day. 

Sunday, we headed down to Canton for two games.

The first game was…against the same team from Saturday.  And this is the problem with our team, when confronted with what are obvious inferior opponents, we have a really bad habit of playing down to their level.  And we won, but it was a lot closer than it should have been, 2-0.

The second game was against Canton, a team we’ve beaten this year 4-1.  And we came out flat and Matthew was flat, and we ended up tied 1-1.  But Canton knew that they had done well, and our coach told the boys it was a pretty disappointing game.

Would love for this group of boys to take the step up and be able to play with the top 4-8 teams in the state….but it seems like we take two steps forward and then one giant step back.