Tennis has rough start to season

Published 8:00 pm Friday, September 13, 2002

The Oak Harbor boys tennis team has faced tough competition in its first two match-ups of the season.

Losing 1-6 to Stanwood Sept. 2, and also going down 1-6 Wednesday to last year’s WesCo north division champs Snohomish could be taken as a bad start to the season. But, considering those teams are two of the leaders in Oak Harbor’s division, coach Horace Mells and his team are taking the losses as more of a learning experience.

“Anytime you play teams that are tough you’re going to get better,” Mells said.

Head-to-head contests are determined by the winner of the best of seven matches. Four singles matches and three doubles are held. Oak Harbor needs to improve its doubles game in order to get some notches on their winning belt, according to Mells.

“We’re weak in the doubles, and we were last year too. That puts pressure on the singles,” Mells said.

Improving the doubles teams will mean a change of mindset if Mells has anything to do with it. Needing to “see the game like the professionals do,” is one of the adjustments Mells envisions for his doubles players, such as the number one doubles team of seniors Justin Peattie and Dan Van Dyke.

Oak Harbor’s lone returning senior and number one singles player, Dan Hinkley, had a serious case of lock-jaw Wednesday. Hinkley was playing with a wired jaw after he broke it in two places after he was kicked in a one-on-one encounter with a goalkeeper during a club soccer game.

Wednesday’s tennis math-up against Snohomish was his first after missing a week of practice. He went 3-6 and 2-6 against Snohomish’s number one hitter Zack Gordon, saying he, “wasn’t hitting very well,” and that after a few more games he’d wear off his rustiness from taking time off.

According to Hinkley, doctors expect his jaw to be wired for five more weeks.

Despite the learning curve, Mells expressed higher standards in mind for his Wildcat tennis players against Snohomish.

“I expected them to come out and fight — I just don’t think they fought hard enough,” he said.

The results of Oak Harbor’s contest against Arlington yesterday were not available at press time. At Wednesday’s match Hinkley showed optimism about the matching against Arlington, and the season that lies ahead of the Oak Harbor team.

“It’s a real young team, and we look forward to getting experience behind them and pulling that through to next year,” Hinkley said.

The next home competition for Oak Harbor will be Sept. 16 against Marysville-Pilchuck, beginning at 3:45 p.m.