2016 Site and Men’s Season Kickoff!!

Well, I guess I’m not really off to the best start, am I? I promised a kickoff article on Saturday and it was totally derailed by the U.S. Open.  By the way, shoutout to anyone who was in NY the past few days, maybe you ran into me at the event.  Or maybe you didn’t.  Either way, the U.S. Open usually marks the time when young freshies are getting to school and the returning classmen are already looking to get into full gear for the season.  On the Women’s side, there are some matches already going on, which is downright absurd to me, but for now I will be focusing on the Men’s side.  You should know the drill.  

First, I’ll hit you with a quick lowdown of what happened last season.  CMS finally won their first championship under Coach Settles and got the monkey off their back.  Middlebury and Coach Hansen surprised a lot of people and made the finals despite no one really thinking they would get there (other than maybe the resident D3NE). There were surprise teams and disappointing ones, but overall it was a fun season.  Here at the blog, we added Women’s, a writer who goes by the name of D3Regional (not that cool), and I think we had our best season yet.  As always, if you have things you want to see this season, please feel free to let me know in the comments.  Okay, onto this year.

What to Expect

D3ASouth – I’m another year older and another year out of the game, but you can fully expect the same amount of excitement from me. I was able to catch A LOT of great matches last year, so I have some familiarity with the players and will be leading the charge on this site again this season. You can expect missed deadlines from me, but you can also expect a lot of bold claims, social media presence, and sarcastic jokes! You got to take the good with the bad, am I right?

Men’s Writers – I’m pleased to inform you that we will be returning all 4 of our Men’s writers that aren’t me, which is saying something. You will all have to endure the false tweets that D3NE always sends out, the general oldness of D3Central, the snarkiness of D3West, and whatever D3Regional’s claim to fame is. If you like that stuff, then you’re in luck! I am also pleased to announce that we are working on some contracts with some additional writers, so we may have an ever growing team! Stay tuned for their emails and twitter accounts.

Women’s – We will be returning the NE and West writers from last year, as well as myself! However, we may have some additional help coming soon in regards to the other sections, so please stay tuned for those emails and twitter accounts. Also, we will have a kickoff article just for the Women’s section sometime after this one, so be ready for that.

The Blog – I wanted to make things more interactive this year, so I will be brainstorming with the team this fall to see how we can create a bigger social media presence. Facebook, Instagram, who knows?! I think it would be really cool to have people video matches and send them in to me for the Division3Tennis instagram.  Wouldn’t that be sweet?  Other than that, I’m looking for the new blood to bring in some new article ideas, features, and whatever else goes into a DIII tennis blog.

You Guys – What I’m expecting from all of you is a another fantastic year. Let’s keep the momentum going after a year where we continued to have great live stats, live video, live commentary, and a ton of DIII players making connections through this site and live play. I fully expect everyone to be active in the comments section as well as in the twittersphere, because that’s what I live for (sometimes)! No matter what, I know we’ll get great play from all of you players and I’m glad we are back.

Okay! Well that’s really the best way to kickoff the season.  I know the ITAs are coming up, and the team and I are gearing up for anything and handling things in the background. As always, I will be kicking off this season with none other than my 10 Burning Questions of the Year.

1. Will there be a dominant team that emerges from the pack?

For the past few years, we’ve seen a dominant CMS team that has really taken it to the rest of the field in the regular season, with the culmination being last year’s championship.  Amherst has always been a dominant team and we’ve gotten used to seeing a lot of teams rise to the top throughout the season.  One of the big questions for me this year is seeing if a top team can truly establish themselves as a #1.  The feeling I’m getting is that no team will truly be a #1 team until the end of the year, when one of the best teams fires on all cylinders. It will be interesting.

2.  Can Chicago continue the momentum from the 2014-15 season?

There was another team that “finally” broke through last year, and that was the Chicago Maroons. They rolled out 5 freshmen in their starting singles lineup and rode that talent to a 4th place finish in the NCAA tournament. Crazy, right?  Well, the Maroons and Coach Tee have locked in another set of great recruits and are looking for more. Is this a team that can win a championship despite having very little “experience?” I know D3Central is high on Chicago (he has been for like 10 years), and I joined him on the bandwagon last year. Let’s throw some pressure on these guys – Chicago is the team to beat this year.

3.  Woah there, what about CMS?

How can I forget about the defending champion Stags? CMS dominated last year, but then they also graduated the Triple Crown winner Warren Wood, captain Joe Dorn, and possibly the best #3 player in the nation, Nik Marino.  Those three guys propelled the Stags team to a championship last year. It’s a new set of players starting in Claremont, starting with Skyler Butts, who is the lone standout from last year. Coach Settles is hoping his extreme amounts of depth and young talent can fill in for three spots that were huge for the Stags last year. While this is a top 5 team, can we really consider them in the national championship conversation?

4. Will any mid-tier teams continue their rise into the upper echelon of DIII Tennis?

Last year, we saw a few teams break into the top 20 for the first time in a while, if not ever. Wesleyan, Stevens, and other Northeastern teams all had close calls against top teams or even defeated some of them. Getting to the top 20 is a tough task, but getting into the top 15 and top 10 is even tougher. Just a few  years ago, Case Western was one of the only teams ever to go from unranked into the top 10 in the span of a few years. Do we have any teams like the Spartans in this new set of teams knocking on the door? I’d carefully say watch out for Wesleyan, but we all know where that’s gotten us the past few years. This will be interesting.

5. Who are the teams that will disappoint?

This is a loaded question that has many answers to it. Last year, teams like Case Western, CMU, and Wesleyan failed to make the tournament despite having a lot of promise going into the season.  Emory, who was a legit national contender (so I thought), fizzled out in the Elite 8, a repeat of the year before.  Then we had teams like Tufts that were considered top 20 teams that simply didn’t win any big matches.  With every success story, there will be a team that disappoints. Who will be those teams this year? I’m not going to go into too much detail, but would love to hear from you as to what teams there are that will potentially disappoint.  Who knows, maybe a championship contender like CMS or Middlebury will get a bit complacent and fall off the championship map.  Or maybe a team like Kenyon that lost a leader and other seniors?

6. How many teams will be let in through Pool C, and what will the impact be?

We had to endure the atrocity that was letting only 5 teams in through Pool C in 2014-2015 and I must say it was not pleasant. Usually we learn of these rule changes and NCAA tournament berth stuff sometime during the fall, so my eye will be out to see what’s going on in regards to Pool C.  If you remember correctly, there were two deserving teams that got left out of the tournament from the UAA (CMU and Case Western), one from the SCIAC (Redlands), and one from the NESCAC (Williams). You could make an argument for a couple other teams, but that’s 4 top 15 teams that could have made it. If we again have to live in a 5 team Pool C world, what kind of effect will that have on the UAA, NESCAC, and SCIAC? My guess this year is that we’ll see a similar breakout as last year, meaning two UAA teams are going to have to fight to get in (most likely CMU and Case).  Pomona may have to really fight as well. No matter what, I wish we got 7 damn spots like we used to have.  It would make things way easier.

7. Will there be a team that surprises this year?

I think there are a only a couple of teams that aren’t on our radar this year that can really surprise us with a top 15 win or two. Two teams that are especially on my list are NC Wesleyan and MIT. I gave a little schpiel about how we should take MIT’s sick recruiting class with a grain of salt, because recruiting doesn’t win you matches, coaching and player development do.  NC Wesleyan is an interesting case because they showed some signs of hope last year by taking out an Elite 8 team in Johns Hopkins.  The team is young and international, kind of like Pitbull circa 2010. Mr. 305, everyone.

8. Speaking of which….

What can we expect from Johns Hopkins? They lost a ton of “leaders” in Tanner Brown, Erik Lim, Ben Hwang, Noah Joachim, and Jensen Reiter. That’s 5 starters that they are losing. The Jays brought in a solid recruiting class but nothing that was that special.  They will need major development from some of their young guys (I’m looking at you, Justin Kang) to meet the always high expectations of the Blue Jays program. Hopkins has always been an interesting case for the blog because they are a wild card all the time.  One day they crap the bed, the next they beat Kenyon at home in the Sweet 16. What will come for the Jays in 2015-16?

9. What kind of impact can we expect from a plethora of new coaches?

In a rare coaching carousel this summer, we’ve seen new coaches come through in Linfield (Belletto), Whittier (Quinn Calderon), Colby (Jason Cohen), and NCW (no idea who it is). Will a coaching change be what was desperately needed by these teams? The one move that I think is intriguing is Coach Cohen’s arrival at Colby.  While Colby doesn’t necessarily have the best talent anymore, that has always been a school that hasn’t reached it’s talent potential. Can a new coach change the game for the program?

10. NESCAC Powers, or what?

My last question will be dedicated to the two NESCAC powers, Amherst and Middlebury. A lot of people seem to be on Chicago’s bandwagon this year, but the two teams out in the Northeast that have the goods to challenge them are Amherst and Middlebury. Middlebury should theoretically be the favorite this year after making it to the finals last year. I know that the Guru is high on the Panthers after a great year.  Amherst always seems to be lurking in the shadows with random talented guys and will now be in their second year under Coach Doebler. Both teams have championship potential.  Will either of them capitalize?

BONUS: I realize that Trinity TX has not been mentioned, but they have secured a few nice three star recruits to add to their collection of talent. Despite graduating Jordan Mayer and team leader Aaron Skinner, the Tigers are always a force to be reckoned with.  I don’t know what kind of Trinity is about to have, but I expect them to be a top 10 team at least with their talent.

FIN. That took me four days, but I’m finally finished.  Welcome back all and I hope you are excited for a great season of Division III Tennis.  We’re about to ramp up, and you know what that means. Twitter game is back on point. Leggooo!!