For the members of the Indian River (4-5) varsity tennis team, this season is all about learning the game and developing their skills for future seasons. But, more importantly, it’s about having fun.
Coastal Point • FILE PHOTOS
Singles player Eric Linde takes flight while sending one across the net.
And following a 5-0 win over Milford on May 1, the varsity team made the best of a bad situation, when their bus broke down on their way to Polytech for a road match the very next day.
The bus’s transmission blew sky high — ironically, in a Milford parking lot — so head coach Pat Cicala decided that if they couldn’t get another win, they might as well go home with full bellies and start again fresh the next day.
“We were supposed to play Polytech, but our bus broke down and we ended up waiting around for an hour and half. So I decided to take them all to Hardee’s and bought them $40 worth of chicken,” Cicala said.
“It was great,” Indian River’s second-singles player Zack Kmetz said. “He bought us chicken and then we got to go home.”
And, sure enough, those who weren’t on the Indian River band trip were back on the courts on May 2, hard at work, tweaking their game in preparation for their final two regular-season matches and the Henlopen Conference tournament on May 11.
“They’re very conscientious about that,” Cicala said. “I told them to go out and hit the ball, since half of the team was going to be gone because of the band trip. And, sure enough, they go out and they do what they got to do.
“They understand that tennis, like golf, is not some game that you can just play on the weekends. They understand that you have to play three or four times a week if you’re going to improve.
“And as far as winning or losing, it really doesn’t make a difference to me,” he continued. “I’m only interested that the kids are improving and more importantly are having fun.”
And, right now, the players are making strides and, according to them, made a great decision to join the team.
Kmetz and Conover both played baseball from a young age and decided to make the transition this year because they’d burned out from playing.
“When I was 12, I must’ve played about 100 games, Kmetz recalled.
“Yeah, with travel, school and Little League, I probably played at least 100 games (too),” first-team doubles player Chris Conover concurred.
“I still like it (baseball). But, honestly, I think I’m better at tennis,” Kmetz continued.
“In tennis, there are teams that have athletes and those that have kids that play a lot, and we’re a team that has a lot of athletes,” Kmetz said. “We have a lot of baseball players playing tennis, but we’re getting a lot of experience.
“It’s real laid back here. Everyone’s out to have fun here. And since we’re all pretty much sophomores, we’ll have a good chance to win more games over the next two years.”
And while the team will most likely only continue to improve over the course of the next two years, Cicala believes that any one of his players can compete at the upcoming conference tournament.
“There are players in the league that are much better than us — (but) at any time my guys can take them to the task,” he said. “They play with so much heart.”
Indian River will host Seaford and Smyrna on May 7 and 8, respectively.