May 3, 2023 at 2:30 p.m.
Hodag tennis falls to SPASH in battle of conference leaders
Hodag tennis falls to SPASH in battle of conference leaders
SPASH won three of four singles flights and took a win at No. 3 doubles to edge the Hodags 4-3 in Stevens Point. The Wisconsin Valley Conference leaders held off the leaders of the Great Northern Conference in what could be a key matchup for subsectional seeding later this month.
"They're a good team and I knew every match was going to be a close one that we could win, but we could also lose," Hodag coach Matt Nichols said. "It was fun. It was good, competitive tennis. It sucks to lose but it was fun to watch."
The wind, gusting up to 30 MPH at times, proved to be a major story in the match. It moved the ball around the court, making for tricky playing conditions for all players.
"I think the winner is probably the person who better adjusted and I think it all just came down to the mentality of 'how can we use this wind - is it a crutch or a weapon?'" Nichols said. "The people that saw it as a weapon did well and the people that saw it a crutch used it as a crutch and then lost."
Junior John Currie used the wind most effectively for Rhinelander. He picked up the Hodags' lone singles win, defeating Stevens Point's Marek Woytasik 6-1, 6-1 at the No. 2 flight.
"He just commands the ball. He puts a lot of top (spin), he swings through and the wind doesn't affect his shot as much because of that," Nichols said. "But he also thought about what side of the court he's on, if he was hitting with or against the wind and used it to his advantage. It was fun to see."
Rhinelander's top two doubles teams of Joey Belanger and Layne Roeser, and Leo Losch and Charlie Heck, both claimed a set tiebreaker as part of straight-set wins.
After taking the first set from SPASH's Jack Diekelman and Carter Gaede 6-1, Belanger and Roeser were pushed to a tiebreaker in the second set. The Hodag pair jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the race to seven, but SPASH came back to tie it at five and the sides traded points before Belanger and Roeser finally got the two-point margin needed to clinch the tiebreaker and the match, 13-11.
"It was going back and forth," Nichols said. "We were up, we were down and we were able to close. They've obviously had experience with tiebreaks. They stayed pretty relaxed through the whole thing. It's good to see them do that. They've got to get used to playing tight games and competitive teams."
Heck and Losch won the 12th game of the first set to force a tiebreaker against Winston Hill and Adam Rust. The Hodag pair took that 7-2. They then got up a break early in the second set and were able to hold on for a 6-4 win.
Losch and Heck were 0-3 in either set or match tiebreakers this season prior to Tuesday's win.
"They brought it back and, actually, I think it's the first tiebreak they've won this season," Nichols said. "It shows a lot of growth and improvement. It was fun to watch and witness."
The WIAA Division 1 subsectional, scheduled for later this month is, essentially, a reprise of the Wisconsin Valley Conference tournament, with Rhinelander thrown in as a plus one. With SPASH currently leading the Valley, Nichols said Tuesday's match was crucial in terms of postseason seeding.
"When we look at seeding, they're leading the conference and if you can beat the best in the Valley, that's where we go," he said. It should give us to one-seed in those flights we won."
SPASH commanded most of the other matches. Matt Davis rolled to a 6-1, 6-0 win over Dalton Fritz at the top flight and Carson Slowinski was a 6-1, 6-2 winner over Nick Lesch at No. 4. Brock Chandonais and Jacob Lutgen pulled away from Eli Lundt and Dawson Pontell in a 6-3, 6-1 win at No. 3 doubles. Mason DeBot scored the clinching point in the dual for SPASH, defeating Gavin Denis 6-3, 6-4 at No. 3 singles in the sixth match to finish.
Rhinelander (10-6, 3-0 Great Northern) was scheduled to host Pacelli Thursday in a match that concluded after press time for today's edition. Going into Thursday's play, Rhinelander held a four-point lead on Medford in the GNC with both teams sitting at 3-0 in the conference. The Hodags and Raiders will face off in a key conference doubleheader next Tuesday in Rhinelander, kicking off a frantic finish to the season for the Hodags.
"It seems like our season has just been prolonged and we're just going to get outside, it's going to get nice and we'll have a week or two left, which is crazy," Nichols said. "It is what it is and we'll just take what we can get."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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