Tennis: Foxes Win Inaugural NIB-12 Meet

Like parents, coaches worry about their kids even during favorable situations.

The Yorkville boys tennis team entered the Northern Illinois Big 12 Conference boys tennis meet as favorites after breezing through a 9-0 regular conference season and accumulating 42 dual points, comfortably ahead of Geneseo (6-2 record, 29 points), Ottawa (7-2, 28) and LaSalle-Peru (6-3, 27).

Still, Yorkville coach Frank Yabsley was worried when the team went several days without playing due to poor weather. The conference meet was originally scheduled for Friday but wasn't completed until Monday.

The time off didn't slow the Foxes though as they won No. 2 singles, No. 2 doubles and No. 3 doubles and finished in second place in No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles.

The Foxes scored a meet-best 28 points to finish with 70 overall to secure the conference tournament championship. Geneseo was the runner-up with 48

"We hadn't played in four days from Thursday until Monday and with the wind and the weather I didn't know if we'd have some upsets or not," Yabsley said. "Geneseo and Ottawa had some upsets early that allowed us to relax some more. And we had a 15-minute talk on the bus about staying focused, and I was really impressed with them."

Jon Moment beat Geneseo's Shawn DePauw, 6-2, 6-1, in the championship at No. 2 singles.

"Jon gave up just 13 games in winning the championship," Yabsley said.

Mike Ems and Joe Gutzwiler took care of opponents from Rochelle, 6-3, 6-3, and Morris, 6-1, 6-2, before upsetting top seed Nathan Olivero and Andy Sickley from LaSalle-Peru, 4-6, 6-0, 6-3.

"We had lost 6-2, 6-3 to them during our regular season match and wanted to play them tough this time around and hopefully take it to them," Yabsley said. "We trailed 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 (in third set) before we ran off four straight games as we seemed to thrive on the pressure and hit winner after winner to seal the championship."

Zack Hames and Christian Hidalgo dropped its first set to Ottawa's Matt Anderson and Nathan McAlpine, but rallied for a 2-6, 6-1, 6-2 victory.

"I made sure they knew what our game plan was and how we were going to execute it," Yabsley said. "The third set we were up 4-1 and 5-2 with many deuce points. We finally held serve for the sixth game and the championship was ours."

After losing to top seed Geneseo in the regular season, No. 1 doubles teams Ricky Hernandez and Jason Pickering were looking to pull off an upset and show their growth as a tandem. After losing the first set, the Foxes rallied in the second, only to lose on a tie breaker.

At No. 1 singles, Brian Koski beat Dixon's Caleb Bradley, 6-2, 7-5, and clobbered Ottawa's Jackson Evenson, 6-3, 6-0, to advance to the championship against DeKalb's Matt Kulma. Koski sustained an ankle injury and dropped a 6-1, 6-3 decision to Kulma but still earned five team points to help the Foxes take home the inaugural conference title.

The Foxes finished their regular season with a 20-1 record in dual meets and only dropped two doubles matches and did not lose any singles matches during the regular conference season.

Next up for the Foxes is the Oswego sectional this Friday and Saturday. The Foxes will face tough competition, including one of the state's top teams, Neuqua Valley. The IHSA still has boys tennis as a one-class state series so smaller schools like Yorkville have the chore of battling against bigger schools like Neuqua Valley and Minooka.