Boys tennis: Sterling tops Newman in windy dual at home

STERLING – The boys tennis teams from Sterling and Newman battled each other – and the wind – in a nonconference dual meet Monday afternoon, with the Golden Warriors topping the Comets 4-1.

With sustained winds from the south between 20 and 30 mph, and gusts even higher blowing from one baseline of the courts to the other, two different styles of tennis emerged depending on which side of the net the players were on.

“The one side, we figured out pretty early that it was hard to hit it out deep, so when you’d get some to hit hard, you’d just kind of put it up there and keep it in,” Sterling senior Luke Valentino said. “On the other side, you served it hard so it cut through the wind and it did all right. It’s a little nicer when the wind’s coming sideways rather than down the court, but we played with it.”

Players hitting toward Roscoe Eades Stadium were able to take big backswings and hit the ball as hard as they could, while those playing away from the football field were forced to take a much more careful approach to their shots.

[ Photos from Sterling vs. Newman boys tennis ]

And that wasn’t the only factor making things more difficult; the wind was coming a bit from the east as well, meaning shots hit up in the air would also move sideways. A perfect example: in one doubles match, a shot looked to be headed out of bounds on the side, but a gust grabbed it and blew it back into the court and the point continued.

Another issue was the ball moving sideways during the toss on serves; sometimes the serves were mis-hit because the ball wasn’t where the player expected it to be when he swung his racket through.

“On the side where you’re hitting into the wind, you have to hit it a lot harder, and also be ready to run, because if you see them draw their racket up higher, it usually means they’re going to slice a shot,” Newman’s James Rhodes said. “On the side where the wind is blowing from your back, you have to hit heavy topspin so it drops in the back corners.

“And serving was tough today; every time I’d toss the ball, it would move one way or the other, and I just never really figured it out. But it was pretty fun to be able to hit it as hard as I wanted to and pretty much have it go in all the time when I was playing into the wind.”

The match of the meet was at No. 2 doubles, a back-and-forth affair the whole way. Rhodes and Griffin Moran won the first set for the Comets, but Kayden Loos and Ben Boze battled back and won a second-set tiebreaker to force the final tiebreaker to 10.

Rhodes and Moran took a 2-0 lead, then Loos and Boze won the next four points for a 4-2 lead. The tiebreaker was tied 4-4, 5-5, 6-6 and 7-7 before Newman took an 8-7 lead, its first time in front since 2-1.

But Loos and Boze won the last three points to win the tiebreaker, and take the match 4-6, 7-6 (4), 10-8.

“Just took a lot of deep breaths and used a lot of positive reinforcement. The mental game is such a big part of tennis, so you’ve got to make sure everybody’s head’s in the game,” said Loos, another 12th-grader being honored on Senior Night. “Ben helped me when I was down, and I helped Ben when he was down, and that kind of helped us through at the end of the game.

“We weren’t really super-focused on hitting the big shots, it was about keeping the ball in, because the wind was so nasty. It was a real tough match, and the wind was carrying the ball funny; it was like hitting a bunch of pineapples, the balls were just flying all over the place. It was tough, but we got the job done. I’m really proud of Ben, and I’m proud of myself for the composure that we had.”

Despite the loss, the two Comets were pleased with the way they played and how they battled through the ups and downs of the match.

“Tennis is really just back and forth all the time, one team will go on a run, then the other team will. I think that played a big part today,” Moran said. “I think just if our serves were going in, we were playing really well. There were some parts where the wind obviously didn’t help at all, but if the serves weren’t going in, we weren’t playing as well; I think that’s the same for anyone in tennis. But it was a fun match to play; it was close, and close ones are always nice to be in. They’re a good team, and it was a good match.”

“They played well; they played better than us at net, that’s for sure,” Rhodes added. “And they got more serves in when it came down to it. But I had a fun time playing with them.”

No. 3 doubles also went to a third-set tiebreaker, as Carson Palmer and Ryan Partington teamed up to give Newman its lone win by topping Carter Morris and Hunter Lofgren 2-6, 6-4, 10-5

Valentino teamed with Connor Pham for a 6-3, 6-2 win at No. 1 doubles over Newman’s Koda Brininger and Tyler Bonnell. The match was a friendly one between four players who were familiar with each other, and they shared several laughs at shots affected by the wind.

In the end, it was the deeper shots by Sterling that made the difference, according to Valentino.

“We know them pretty well. We know they’re a solid doubles team; when they get the ball at the net, they know how to put it away,” he said. “So we really tried to hit it as deep as we could; with the wind, it was kind of hard because sometimes it would go out [of bounds]. But we’d try to hit it deep, and win at the net and put it right down the middle. It was a good win.”

The Golden Warriors swept the singles matches. Brecken Peterson downed Logan Palmer 6-0, 6-0 at No. 1, while Elias Jensen topped John Craft 6-3, 6-4 at No. 2 singles.