Archive for the 'Tennis' Category
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
State tennis
Rain is in the forecast for Cheyenne today. That’s not good news for the Wyoming State Tennis Championships which are scheduled to run through Saturday at various locations around the Capital City.
Going into a Wednesday night coaches’ meeting, there was no concrete plan to keep the tournament moving in the event of inclement weather. The main strategy is to wait out any wetness.
Plan B is playing matches into the wee hours of the night at the two sites with lighted courts (Holliday Park and the Cheyenne Country Club), and, if they have to, playing eight-game pro sets. In those matches, the first player to win eight games wins the match, provided they win by at least two games.
“You don’t want to get off to a slow start (in the pro sets),” Central coach Brad Emmons said. “When you’re playing two out of three (sets), you can start off slow and still come back, but if you’re down four games in a pro set, it’s kind of hard to come back.
“You don’t have that chance to start over. You have to be ready to play right away. The pressure builds a lot faster in a pro set.”
Handicapping the tournament
Emmons said Gillette and Central should duke it out for the boys title. The Camels topped Central 3-2 in a dual, but the Indians won the Scottsbluff (Neb.) Invitational with Gillette in the field. Both teams nearly lapped the field en route to winning their regional tournaments.
“There were different winners in Scottsbluff than there were in the dual here,” Emmons said. “It was pretty interesting. There are three divisions where it could be Central-Gillette finals and the other two could feature Central-Gillette semifinals.
“If everyone holds their seeds, they’ll be playing in all five divisions. It should be really close there. It’s going to come down to somebody stumbling. If anyone has a bad match, it could knock a team out because the race is that even.”
On the girls side, defending champion Jackson could run away with the title.
“Jackson has to be the favorite because it has six returning players from its state championship team,” Emmons said. “We lost a dual to Jackson and had a lot of close matches. We might be in the hunt if we can get a few of those turned in our direction.
“Laramie beat us by a few points in the regional tournament, and they have to be in the mix as well. It might be a three-team race, but Jackson is clearly the favorite.”
Jackson won four of five divisions at the north regional. The lone loss came at No. 1 singles where Maddy Gerard fell to two-time state champ Emily Holst.
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
Is this the Indians’ year?
Prior to the prep tennis season, Cheyenne Central coach Brad Emmons told me he had a good feeling about both of his teams.
I know the season is still young, but he was right. Not that I didn’t believe Emmons when he told me that, it’s just when you talk to coaches before the season, at any level of competition, they all say that. So after a while, you start to shake it off.
But numbers never lie, and both of his boys and girls teams have yet to lose.
When I asked Emmons last week if either team will lose this season, he just smiled and said, “We’ll see.”
While I don’t think both teams will remain unbeaten, I do think when the state tourney starts in a few weeks, both teams are heavy favorites to win the team title. A state tourney you can watch in the Capital City.
Emmons says the biggest threat for both teams lies in Jackson.
Still, with the depth the Indians and Lady Indians possess, I don’t see anyone beating them.
There is still a lot of tennis yet to play, but it appears like this prep tennis season belongs to Central.
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
An inadvertent omission
In the Oct. 3 story about doubles teams, I neglected to mention that the No. 1 boys pairing of Austin Fermelia and Patrick Schum isn’t the lone returning team for Cheyenne Central. The No. 3 girls team of Emily Lindly and Valerie Boone also played together last fall.
I had the duo in my list of names, titles and spellings at the beginning of the story I turned into my editors, but neglected to include the ladies in the body of my actual story.