Kevin headed out via bus to Holland Christian for States Thursday night; I drove out Friday morning to watch. Team expectations are lowered this year; even though we do have one seed (2 singles is a #4 seed) the rest of the team is buried in the draw with first round matches against real opponents (instead of byes) and 2nd round matches against seeded teams. Last year it was 1st round byes, 2nd round matches, 3rd round matches against seeded opponents. Matching last year’s point total is all but impossible; we’ll see what the team result is.
Kevin and Adham are one of the unlucky draws; a first round match up with Zeeland East and then a 2nd round matchup against #2 Forest Hill Northern. The bright side? Kevin and Ross last year went up against a #2 FHN team….and won!
Round 1: We’ll take this game by game with the corresponding video linked with each picture.
They win to take a 1-0 lead. Kevin hits a nice passing shot at about the 1:20 mark to finish off the game.
Win, not easily, on serve, to take a 2-0 lead. Kevin was not very happy with the miscommunication at 0:25 mark; Kevin’s about to crush it on his overhand and Adham butts in and messes it up. Hits a nice winner from the net on his backhand at 3:45.
Won to break them again and take a 3-0 lead. Go watch this clip; Kevin had three returns for winners including two off of nice serves by ZE. The best of the bunch is shown above, Kevin is driven to the right here and makes a really nice shot to pass for the winner (that starts at 1:52).
Kevin’s service game; they hold serve to go up 4-0. This game marks the beginning of the ZE lob game; Kevin does not hit the first ball that is lobbed to him very well at all. Serves are pretty good, but, there’s one of the dreaded double-faults in here as well.
The break ZE again to go up 5-0. Not a lot of good stuff from Kevin here; both rallies that he tries to hit a winner for end up in the net or out. But ZE makes enough mistakes that it doesn’t matter.
They go up 30-love here; and give up the next four points to get broken; they only lead 5-1 now. Kevin hits a nice shot here at the net to get to 30 (starts up about 0:46 of the video)…..but a whole lot of nothing afterwards.
I don’t get all of this game on tape, but, they finish off the set 6-1. Kevin has nice sequence of overhands starting at about 0:34. The line judge chased that ZE dude in brown away from the fence during this game…
If you didn’t watch any of this video WATCH THIS GAME. Kevin’s second service game of the match starts this set, and it takes him about 70 seconds to head back to the sidelines for another drink. A nice overhand smash for the second point, and a nicely placed ball to the center for the wining point. They are winning 1-0 in the second set at the end of this game.
ZE has some problems with double-faulting and we go up 2-0. Kevin hits a shot with a lot of spin that the ZE guy completely misjudges for a winner at around 1:20 and then hits another baseline overhand at 2:35 (after a good rally) for another winner. He finishes the game out with a nice sequence of deep return and pretty passing shot at 3:00.
Man, it’s amazing to me watching this again that we won this game….Adham’s serves come off the rails pretty spectacularly but ZE really can’t take advantage of the problems. Leading 3-0. Not a whole lot of Kevin here; he hits a nice backhand and then jumps and really is lucky to get the overhand in during a sequence that begins at around 1:40.
Takes about 2 minutes to break ZE here and go up 4-0….this game has a lot of nice Kevin-action as well. A return and then volley for a winner that starts at 0:20. An overhead smash at the net for a winner at 0:49. A nice return at the net followed by a overhead smash at the net that he can only laugh about at 1:30. And a return at 1:59 to win the game.
The last Kevin service game of the match…and I thought for a while here he was going to blow through it like he did the first game of this set. But, a inopportune double-fault gave ZE a point before they closed it out to lead 5-0. I think the first 80 seconds of this game are worth watching; everything as Kevin starts to double-fault and afterwards isn’t as good as the first part.
And that’s that, they win 6-1, 6-0
Round 2: And I lingered so much on Round 1 because Round 2 was exactly what a match against the #2 seed was probably going to be….a 6-1, 6-3 loss. Glad they rallied in the second set (they were up 3-2 at one point). I have video of most of this…it may never be watched.
(the end…although you can see the crappy draw problem clearly here. Last year we were in the ‘H’ slot, this year we were not. The difference is one team point in the overall standings, but, this type of draw seemed to happened to every one of our flights…)
Gave Kevin a big hug afterwards…..got all teary-eyed as I told him how proud I was of him (think the actual quote was “damned proud”). Can’t believe I got that sappy….Suzanne was laughing at me afterwards because there are a lot more ‘last events’ to come.
Definitely playing a lot better brand of tennis at the end of this year than I’ve ever seen before….nothing to be ashamed or disappointed about in how it came to an end.
