First time we put together a team to compete in the relatively new MCTA Men's Single league at NTRP 3.5 level for the summer season. Only one other team signed up for the league and that was the Iancu team.
Iancu is a formidable team in general, they bring some of the highest rated and most experienced players together. In fact during the spring season, their team won 12 straight nights with no losses. However, this time around we had slight edge as Iancu brought together only 9 players for the league, which meant we had more choices of players any given night of competition. The men's single league puts together 3 matches per night of competition and winner of at least two matches wins the night's competition. We had total of ten competition nights arranged for us by the MCTA.
Our players were excited, willing and quite adamant on winning, they were all very competitive. We did not start off well; we lost the first two nights' competition. Many of us thought there is no winning against Iancu, they seem to always have the best players on hand. We turned it around the third night though. Our players came into the third night with vengeance and closed it out 3-0 without losing a single set. This energized the whole team.
We were cautious going into the 4th night of competition. We had been collecting scouting notes on the players we had already played and those notes certainly helped. We won the 4th night 2-1 losing total of only four sets. We were 2 vs 2 on the overall score.
The following nights, our players were playing with all the determination they could muster. We kept winning, and by the end of the seventh night we were 5 vs 2 on overall score. Based on individual wins and sets lost, we just had to win two more matches out of the remaining total nine matches.
Our team went into the eighth night of competition relaxed and to have fun. Unfortunately, Iancu had brought some serious power, and although our team gave their best, we could not escape a 0-3 loss. Suddenly we realized that we cannot relax against a team like Iancu, we had to press on.
The ninth night, we came back with all the seriousness we could gather up and our competitive players. We had a surprisingly easy night on two courts, but our third court went into tiebreak. We eventually won the night 3-0. The final night was just for the joy of playing competitive tennis, the team again did wonderfully and pulled out another 3-0 win. We won our first league, one for one!
First time putting a team together and winning the league against a superb team is tremendously encouraging. Now we are headed into the fall season Tri-level League, fielding doubles teams for 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5 levels; this will certainly going to be interesting.
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