Frontier Boys Tennis Season Will Be A War Of The Equals
During the initial two matches of the Frontier League boys tennis season, West Valley and East Valley experienced opposite results.
The Eagles won twice by 4-3 scores, the Knights lost twice.
“We’re 2-0 in league by the skin of our teeth,” said Eagle coach Wally Heidenson. “If the whole season goes like this I will own stock in the Tums company.”
The closeness of the scores, said EV coach Don Krueger, is an indication of how even Frontier teams are this year.
Even with an inexperienced team, the Knights are three individual matches away from equaling WV’s unbeaten record.
“It looks like in league there is not one dominant team as in the past,” said Krueger. “For the first time in a long while they are quite equal.”
Rebuilding year for Knights
Krueger was last year’s Frontier coach of the year and EV had eight seniors and the leaguye’s best singles player.
Sophomore Dennis Winters, junior Jake Walker and fourth-year varsity player Andy Anderson move up to the top three singles positions.
They are the only three returning regulars from that team.
Junior Jim Stroh is the other Knight singles player.
First two doubles teams are junior Ben Winters and freshman Loren Buchanan, junior Marc Hamilton and sophomore Trevor Schmidt.
Other doubles team will come from several candidates, many of them freshman.
Junior Justin Baldwin-Bonney, sophomore Jeremy Frank and ninth graders Reed Wright, Dominic Francis, Travis Brantley and Jayson Pho are all in the running.
“I was not anticipating great things but have been pleasantly surprised,” said Krueger. “It’s kind of good for kids to know anything can happen.”
Five seniors lead Eagle team
Like EV, West Valley’s tennis team includes numerous freshmen.
But five veteran seniors have helped carve out early Eagle success.
Seth Mork, Brian Foss and Duane Lutz are three of the four singles players.
“Seth and Brian split No. 1 last year and are pushing each other,” said Heidenson. “Duane will challenge them, too.”
Other seniors, David Thompson and Jason Sullivan are the number one doubles team.
Freshman Keli Heidenson, the coach’s son, is No. 3 singles.
“He was ranked in the Pacific Northwest a couple years ago but has been fighting a shoulder injury and hasn’t played much lately,” said Heidenson.
Other doubles teams will come from inexperienced junior Jade Taylor, sophomores Kyle Schiewe and Sean Kiphardt or freshmen John Huckabay and Nick Fusare.
“I don’t know if we have a good or bad team.,” said Heidenson. “I just want to get the kids to play as well as they can.”
, DataTimes