(this showed up in the front lawn on Wednesday night….it’s a great thing the booster club does, the varsity players in all the sports get this yard sign. I’m not sure if Kevin cared about it showing up, but, I was glad to see it)
The team travelled to the Flint area to compete in the State Championships….we spent most of the year ranked #10 in the state; in recent weeks we have moved up to #9.
In each flight there are six seeded teams based on the year’s results. Because we spent a lot of time switching partners and lineups in doubles, and because, well, we just didn’t play well in the beginning of the year, none of the Okemos flights received any seeds.
The other thing to point out, before we start, is that Midland Dow is the #1 seed in almost all of the flights. Because we come from the same regional, we can’t be in the same side of the bracket as them. The end result is that for any of the flights to get to the semi-finals, the boys will have to go through the #2 seed in the quarter-finals.
(Kevin and Ross warming up)
2nd Round: Kevin/Ross start the day playing Gibraltar Carlson….both teams are unseeded and lost in their respective regional finals. I looked, but, could find no matches against common opponents.
They start slow, especially Kevin on his serve. We break them and go up 1-0. Kevin serves, and the double faulting disaster from Regionals starts right away…he double faults three times and it’s tied 1-1. They hold, and we are losing 1-2. A lot of unforced errors…Kevin is not playing very well. We break them again, and Ross holds his serve, and we go up 3-2.
We break them again, and Kevin gets broken again, and it’s 4-3. Somewhere in here is the ‘get’ that I posted earlier. Literally the play of the year for Kevin…a lot of great hustle that ends up in the type of shot Ross loves….slow, high, short that he just kills and usually the ball bounces so high it clears the fence that surrounds the court. We break, and then hold, and go on to win the first set 6-3.
Ashton’s Dad is there watching the match with me….he noted that Kevin, when he had no time to think and just reacted and returned the ball was hitting just great shots. But any time that Kevin had time to set up and think about the shot….straight into the net or long.
Kevin starts off serving the second set. And the serving struggles are gone…he’s getting his first serve in and we hold. 1-0. We break them, and hold, it’s 3-0. And we cruise to the victory 6-1.
There is video of this match, and I will post it later this week….3 doubles and 4 doubles had been slated to play inside and there are good high vantage points to watch from.
Because it’s raining, all of the flights have come inside to play….it will be a long time before Kevin plays again (first match was at 10…the second one won’t start until close to 5 pm). And, as a bonus, the next match is against the #2 seed, Forest Hills Northern.
You get team points for each match you win…if you have a bye (as we did, and many others did, as they fit 18 teams into a 32 team bracket) you get two points when you win your first match, one for the match, one for the bye. Okemos has six flights advance to the quarterfinals…combined with one win in the 1st round, we have 13 team points before the 3rd round starts.
Quarter Finals: 5:30 rolls around…..and Kevin/Ross take the court again to play Northern. The 2nd round match against Carlson had ended before the Northern 2nd round match did so Kevin/Ross had a chance to watch them….they came away thinking they were beatable….but of course they would think that.
First set: Starts out great…we break their serve and are up 1-0. We’re up 2-1. Kevin serves, and holds, and we break them again! 4-1. Kevin/Ross are really pumped up; teammates who are watching pretty geeked too!
They serve and hold, and we serve and hold, and it’s 5-2. Kevin serves again….and serves well, but they break us. 5-3. then it’s 5-4. and then 5-5. And they hold serve and we’re losing 6-5.
I understand why these guys are the #2 seed….they are both taller than Kevin and they are uber-aggressive….they come to the net at any and every opportunity. And I can see how that would mean a whole lot of wins against not so good, and even some good teams. But Kevin and Ross are strong enough players to just punch every return, as hard as they can, at those two guys at the net. And more often than not it worked out. But they adjusted, and roared back, and we were down…..with Kevin serving next.
Kevin holds….it’s 6-6 and we’re off to the tiebreaker. First ones to 7, win by 5. I forget the progression of the points, but I know Kevin had a heck of a shot to win it. We win 7-6 (7-5). Whew!
Second set: Starts out not so great….they break Kevin and we go down 0-1. We’re down 1-2, and then down 2-3….we broke them and Kevin’s double faulting disasters came back to haunt him and they broke back; Kevin double faulted 3 times in that game. But we hold and break them the next go round; it’s 4-3 us. We break them, it’s 5-3, and Kevin has several serves for match point but they end up breaking us, and it’s 5-4.
They are serving…..and it’s 15-40….we have two break points for the match. They hold the first one, it’s 30-40. The second one is quite a rally, and Kevin finally pushes a return between the two of them at the net and they have to scramble back and barely return it…..and it’s a soft high looping dink back to the net and everyone knows the match is about to end, because Ross just crushes it. It’s over.
I was asking Kevin later about moments in his life where he’s been that happy…..I’m not sure I could come up with one and he couldn’t think of an event either. They come off the court, they are hugged by the coach, hugged by their teammates, hugged by their parents. Just an awesome moment! I’m sad I wasn’t taping (they were on a court that was you couldn’t tape, but, glad I got to experience the moment like I did.
Sadly, the rest of the team was eliminated by all of those higher seeds…..only Kevin and Ross will play on Saturday.
Semi Finals: Saturday morning everyone is back inside again, still raining, for the semi-finals. Suzanne, Fric, and Frac are here to watch Kevin and Ross take on the #6 seed from Birmingham Seaholm. My description won’t be as detailed here since I don’t have the text records to Suzanne to refresh my memory….
We break them early, and get up 2-1 and 3-2 I think. But we are not playing well….way too many unforced errors. It looks like if we could just return the ball they are not good enough to keep up, but, they are a completely different style than Northern and it’s turning into a slog. Kevin has more of his serving issues, but we hold on to win the first set 6-4.
And it’s all bad after that. They win the next set 6-2, and win the third set tiebreak 6-1. We didn’t play as nearly as well as we did on Friday night, and they looked stronger and stronger as those two sets went by.
Kevin and Ross’s quarterfinal win gave us one more team point….and we finish in 6th. Given that we were 9th in the rankings, that’s nothing but good. Even in those quarter final losses many kids said that they played their best match of the year.
The lower half of the bracket…..
All of the pictures are from the final match on Saturday…..I have video of that match too….but really can only see the first set being uploaded.
Kevin said his goal was to be playing on Saturday, so, even though he was down a little bit on Saturday, he wasn’t really down. And I told him at dinner Saturday night that to put things in perspective, two months ago out here at BNS I was wondering if Kevin would even make varsity this year. Never mind States….or the State semi-finals.
Only four seniors graduate. Time will tell if Ross and Kevin are paired together next year; Ross was #4 singles last year and there is some thought that he could go back to singles. Kevin is probably locked into #2 doubles next year no matter how the partner thing shakes out.
