While our tennis team has seen its share of dominant performances, such as Matt Amstutz winning four 6-0 sets in one day on August 30 or Ben Mast coming back from an 0-6 first-set loss to take his first career varsity match 0-6, 6-4, 6-4 on August 19, no team had provided a real signature moment, a headline photo of the fall sports season. That changed Saturday morning. Despite entering the sectional tournament as obvious favorites, having beaten all the other teams in the tournament, we found ourselves with our backs against the fence, down 1-2 in the team match and 1-5 in the third set at #2 doubles. Jared Schwartzentruber at #2 singles was entering a third set, but that would mean nothing if doubles lost. As coach Matt Miller said at the time, "I think we're about to see a lot of people crying."But that was when things started to change. We took the next four games to tie the score at 5-5. Both teams held serves in the 11th and 12th games, sending the match to a tiebreak. As Jared was up 4-0 in the third set, the team match and both team's seasons came down to this tiebreaker.
"Mikey's booming serve opened the tiebreaker for a 1-0 Bruins lead. Two points for the Falcons gave them the 2-1 advantage. Then a Daniel overhead put us at 2-2. Then things started happening. Daniel and Mikey loosened up again, and played aggressive, and won four straight points. Now we had a match point. It was a long way back from being down 1-5 in the third. After Mikey tried to win it with two big serves, he was able to instead end it on a stretching, well placed, cross-court lob. Tiebreak heros for the Bruins, disappointment for the Falcons."A signature moment we had. #2 doubles would ride the momentum into the afternoon, taking their match 6-2, 6-1 in only 52 minutes and giving Bethany a 1-0 lead on its way to a 4-1 sectional championship. This posed a problem, however: it was the team of Daniel and Mikey who had come back in the face of such long odds. The title of "Athlete of the Week" indicates a singular winner. Solving the problem, Buschert was ineligible this week due to last week's award win. Therefore, the Athlete of the Week for September 28-October 4 is junior Mikey Kelly.
Eligibility: As four weeks have elapsed since his AOW win on September 7, eighth grader Matt Greenlee becomes eligible again next week. Literally all Bruins in a position to win any high school athletic letter (varsity, JV or freshman) during the current season, and their middle school counterparts, are eligible. The only exceptions are winners from the last four weeks: Kellysenior Daniel Buschert, senior Hannah Grieser, and senior Jordan Weaver.
Next Week: Next week's nominations will be due Sunday, October 12, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. As I said several weeks ago, the first person to correctly name how I determined the times will get mentioned in a future post. To nominate someone, send an e-mail to senorloco1908@gmail.com and put "AOW nomination: [name of athlete ('athlete' is singular, not plural)]" in the subject line. (You can even include the quotes if you want.) The body of the message can be used for whatever you want. The three simple things that will disqualify a message are:
- A subject line that reads "AOW nomination: [name of athlete ('athlete' is singular, not plural)]" without actually naming an athlete.
- Anyone nominating multiple people will have only the last nomination counted.
- Señor Loco reserves the right to ignore e-mails with unnecessarily vulgar sections.
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