In the summer of 2003, I got a call from Dan Bodiker. I didn't know who he was. That seems weird, because everybody knows Bod. He wanted to know if I'd be interested in coaching the Bethany Christian tennis team. He told me he already had talked to my college coach and my uncle, and knew I was a good guy. So if I wanted to come in and talk, that would be great.I love tennis. So, I told him I was interested, that I would come talk, but that I was getting married in a week and a half, so I'd need to talk to my lovely bride-to-be. Also, I told him, we were not planning on staying in the area for more than one year, as we wanted to go live the big city life while we were young. I probably wouldn't be able to coach more than one year, but if he was okay with that...
I met the team the next week, four days before my wedding. Bod introduced me to them as their new coach, before we'd even talked about the details. But I love tennis, so I'd convinced my wife (it wasn't that hard, just had to talk through how it would work, and assure her that we could still move to Chicago in December), and I was ready to take the job. I'll never forget Jordan Kauffman's excitement at meeting me. He shook my hand and started talking and telling me that he would be the #3 singles player for the next season. I was a little overwhelmed at meeting all the new faces, but glad to see my team.
I may not have been planning on coaching for seasons and seasons, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to leave a lasting impact on these young players. From what I heard from the players, they had suffered through a rough season in 2002. So, they didn't have high expectations for 2003. What I had in mind was a change in attitude. I wanted to leave the program, even if just in a year, with all players having the belief that they could compete and achieve.
And so that was the message I took to the players as we began to practice. It was easy to see that it would be a change in philosophy for many of them, to take practice seriously. To compete with belief. To play with confidence. But leaders emerged. Joel King knew exactly what I was talking about, and so did senior Colin Yoder. They began to compete fiercely against one another for the #1 singles spot. And the team began to follow that leadership.
But then our schedule. We started out the season with Northridge, Concord, Jimtown, three teams that we had never beaten. So after the work of building confidence in practice, it was difficult to coax the guys through the first rough matches. In fact, we roughed out 10 0-6 sets over the coarse of these matches, with almost everybody suffering at least one.
And then, in our last match of the Concord Invitational, we played the Rochester Zebras. I knew nothing about Rochester at the time, except that they had also lost to Concord and Jimtown, and by similar scores. Tired of losing, I decided to shake up the lineup for the first time. I moved Seth Troyer, who had been playing extremely close matches at #3 singles, to #1 doubles with Jordan Mumaw, hoping to fortify that position. They ended up winning the Individual Sectional, so I guess that worked. Jordan Kauffman, my sure-fire #3, had been playing #1 doubles but now I slid him into a spot at #2 doubles. This really helped these positions.
The match with Rochester started well, for the most part. The strengthened doubles squads took their first sets easily and quickly, and it seemed as if my strategy was working. However, Ben Shenk, the new #3, lost his first set quickly. But that was the trade off, right? The match then looked as if it would come down to one of my two leaders, Joel King at #2 singles and Colin Yoder at #1 singles. We needed one win from the two of them to seal my first coaching victory.
And they were tight, both first sets went right to the end. Joel fought back and forth with fellow sophomore Carson Vanderbosshe. He won the first set 7-5 and we looked in good shape. Just one more set. Then, Colin went into a first set tiebreak with senior Ryan Gady, and he won it! Just like that we were in a powerful position in the match, having wrapped up both doubles and having set leads in 2 of the 3 singles!
And then Joel had the first occurrence of what would become a pattern in his matches. After grinding out the first set, and fighting for every point, Vanderbosshe couldn't do it anymore. Whether he was too tired, mentally or physically, or whether he just quit, I don't know. But the match was over, Joel rolled to the second set victory 6-0.
As a coach, I now had my first win. Something to refocus the team around. Colin Yoder then provided the icing, pulling out a hard fought three set win. The team was 1-3 on the young season, but growing, changing, learning.
I went home and told my wife, "I love this. I love this a lot. I think it's going to be hard for me to leave this team after the year." And it was, I'm still here.