Still growing

The Patriots came into the season without much experience, particularly at the doubles positions.

The more Kadyn Carpenter and Alex Miller have played together, the more comfortable they’ve become with the format and the more successful they’ve been.

No. 1 doubles duo Carpenter and Miller have steadily progressed for the Jay County High School boys tennis team, even notching a point for them as part of a 4-1 win over the Elwood Panthers on Saturday during the Patriot Invitational.

Before the victory over Elwood, the Patriots fell to South Adams 3-2 in a non-conference matchup.

“I thought overall, I’ve seen a lot of improvement, especially from No. 1 dubs,” said JCHS coach Donald Gillespie. “They won two at the beginning of the week then they got beat by a good Bluffton team. I’ll give the kids credit, they played well against Bluffton, I was not ashamed of that at all and those guys were all conference last year so, there’s a huge difference.

“Today I saw us grow up a little bit more. They are growing as a team.”

The freshmen dropped their first four matches before they broke through Sept. 9 against Muncie Central. They followed it up with a win against Randolph Southern before falling to Bluffton. On Saturday, Carpenter and Miller opened the invite with a 7-5, 6-3 defeat at the hands of Gabe and Ian Neuenschwander. They then secured a 6-0, 3-6, 10-5 victory over Anthony Pan and Kai Wilkey to put the Patriots (4-8) up 2-0 in the match.

Jay’s duo cruised through the first set with the final point of the sixth game coming on a backhand by Miller after deuce was forced two times.

“We were being aggressive, charging the net,” Miller said. “(Carpenter) had a couple great net shots that they could not get back to and we put them away in that first set.”

They fell behind quickly in the second set 4-1, but picked two more games up before eventually falling 6-3. In between sets, Gillespie met them at the fence, telling them to pick the pace back up and be more aggressive like they were in the first set. That strategy worked out, taking the first seven points of the 10-point tiebreaker including two shots by Carpenter that put the Elwood duo in bad positions to return the ball.

The Panthers then claimed five of the next six points in an effort to mount a comeback. After one of the Elwood players sent a ball out long, Miller turned to Carpenter to urge his teammate on with, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Miller ended the match on the next point with a volley he placed between Pan and Wilkey.

“We weren’t really as aggressive in that second set,” Carpenter said. “We didn’t play the net as well as we did in the first set. Once we went back to what we were doing before, we had some success.”

Tucker Griffin preceded the No.1 doubles victory by making quick work of Jackson Gordon 6-1, 6-1 in the No. 2 singles contest. (Griffin fell to South Adams’ Cole Hyman 7-5, 6-3 earlier in the day.)

As Jacob Monroe and Carter Wellmann entered their own 10-point tiebreaker for the No. 2 doubles contest, Gabe Pinkerton secured the win for Jay County with a 6-0, 6-3 defeat of Drake Quesada at the No. 3 singles position.

Monroe and Wellmann’s tiebreaker with Kalin and Kolin Leever ended up a lot closer. 

The pairs constantly traded points with each other. Jay County’s largest lead was 5-3 after a volley from Wellmann couldn’t be returned. The Leevers managed to turn things around for their own two-point lead after a double fault by Monroe put them up 9-7.

The Patriots got one more point on an errant forehand before the match ended with a volley that couldn’t be returned by Monroe for a 6-4, 4-6, 10-8 Elwood victory.

Eli Dirksen dominated both No. 1 singles matches for JCHS, beating the Starfires’ Kade Sprunger 6-2, 6-1 before taking down Liam Cannon 6-1, 6-0. Dirksen’s eighth straight win gives him the best record of the Patriots at 8-4.

“Eli is Eli,” Gillespie said. “He cruised today. … The big thing with Eli is he has to be focused and get it over with. Don’t even let the other guy think about winning.”

The second point during the match with South Adams came from the No. 2 doubles pair of Monroe and Blake Kahlig. They took down Isaiah Conrad and Ben Dubach 6-3, 6-4.

“Overall, I'm happy,” Gillespie said. “Basically where I thought we’d be probably mid-year. I’ve got some winnable matches coming up, but we’re gonna have to play. We’re very inexperienced still. We’re growing but we only have two weeks left of the season.”