Maine high school tennis preseason often is a hectic time
Apr. 21—It happened on multiple occasions at the start of this spring. Cheverus tennis coach Ben Putnam would go into a day with practice plans for his teams, only to be met with a persistent rain, a late-arriving shower, or even the odd snowfall.
"You make a plan, you go 'Great, this is what we'll do today,' and then some stray cloud comes rolling through at 3:30," said Putnam, who coaches the boys and girls teams for the Stags. "You go 'Well, I guess we won't do anything today. See if we can come back at it tomorrow.' It's definitely a difficulty."
Getting ready for the tennis season can always be a race against time, as singles ladders and doubles teams need to be finalized through intra-squad competition and challenges before the first match of the regular season. Add in the mix of rain, snow, wind and cold that took up most of the early April days, and this preseason became even more of a sprint.
"This particular spring, usually we have two or three bad days, but then we have two or three nice days. That has not been the case here," Falmouth girls coach Larry Nichols said. "We've had probably 4.5 practices that were real tennis. We've had three practices where it was like a 30 mile-an-hour wind. … It's been not really tennis, (it's been) some sort of game developed by the Aztecs."
The season began with opening practices on March 31. April 17 was the first match day. Rain, snow or wind were in the forecast for eight of the 14 potential practice days in between.
For teams like Putnam's Stags, the weather's been enough at times to derail practice for the day entirely. Others, like the Scarborough girls, had access to indoor courts, but that came with another challenge; due to limitations on court availability, some Red Storm practices at Apex Racket and Fitness had to be held late at night in order to accommodate the whole team.
"We always had courts at 8:30 to 10:30 at night, so it was hard on school nights," Scarborough sophomore Suzann Link said. "We had to get five courts, because we had so many people trying out and so many people playing."
Weather added to what is already a challenge for tennis coaches, who are encouraged to have their ladders set by the time the first match date comes around. Ladders aren't arbitrary, but rather are determined by challenge matches, which take court space and practice time already at a premium to play.
"It's a pretty tight timeframe to try to fit things into," said Scarborough girls coach Lincoln MacIsaac, who had to use early days for tryouts to pare 37 kids down to 22 for the roster. "To have your No. 1 play your No. 2 and figure out who's better, and have the person who loses that match play the next person in line to figure out who's there, you've got to run at least four or five of those matches, and those matches can take up a full practice period."
For coaches, the pressure to have their ladders established can come from within. Once they know for sure who their top three singles players are, they can settle their doubles teams and get the players used to playing with each other and developing an on-court chemistry.
"I want to get this set up, because I want to start working with the doubles teams on positioning, I want the singles players to be focused on the game of singles. They're different," Nichols said. "You want the kids to feel confident that they've had a fair shake. … I'm anxious, but it's my own anxiousness. I want this done."
This year, coaches have been encouraged to enter their challenge match results into the Universal Tennis Rating (UTR), a system which uses those results to assign the players a rating based on the competition they're playing. Those ratings would determine the ladder for a team.
Thornton Academy boys coach Andy Carlson said the UTR element has created more urgency for coaches who in previous years might have let their ladder sort itself out gradually to get their challenges matches in so that the players' rating is as accurate as possible. UTR will be used for seeding in the state singles tournament.
"I think there's a time-consuming burden, and there's a weight now with ladder matches and putting them in UTR," he said. "Most coaches, the first week or two of the season, their ladder is still evolving. I think some coaches feel a little bit more pressure to have that evolve quicker during preseason because of the implementation of UTR."
Weather challenges are never welcome, but coaches know match challenges serve their purpose, not only in resolving the ladder, but in preparing the players for the competition that awaits.
"Match play is a muscle, just like anything else," Putnam said. "Getting used to playing in those kinds of pressure situations can be great. They've got to work that out, just like they go out and they hit 1,000 forehands and they hit 1,000 backhands."
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