The Portage Invitational

Doug and I spent the majority of today at Portage High School watching the Bethany Bruins tennis team play in an invitational.  Last year, there were only three teams participating.  Thus, we were happy to hear that they had added Triton to the tournament this fall.  Going into today, the boys felt that they had the upper hand.  They had already beaten Triton and were victorious against both Merrillville and Portage last year.  

The day started off well.  Cameron played the #1 doubles spot with Breece against Merrillville to begin the tournament.  They completely dominated the match and were the first ones off of the court winning 6-0, 6-0.  The rest of Bethany's team won in two sets as well and the boys were soon on to their second match, this time playing Triton.  Since Cameron and Breece had dominated the Trojans doubles team in their first match and Triton only had four members on their roster, the boys sat out of this match.  Doug and I used the time to catch up on some reading and take a walk around the area.

Bethany's last match of the day was against Portage.  Cameron played the #1 singles position during this match and after his first set victory, we felt pretty good about his chances of winning.  Cameron started off the second set up 2-1 when everything seemed to change.  His opponent took his game up a notch and just couldn't miss.  In fact he did not have an unforced error throughout the rest of the set.  Cameron soon found himself in a third set tiebreak.  Between his opponent's consistent play and Cameron's struggle to serve in the increased wind speeds, he soon found himself on the wrong side of a third set win.  

Knowing that #1 doubles and #2 singles had already won, we were hopeful that either #3 singles or #2 doubles would win their tiebreaks.  Unfortunately, all of the third sets went Portage's way and the Bruins went home with a disappointing second place finish.  It probably wouldn't have been so upsetting, but the unsportsmanlike conduct of the Portage players and fans was very hard to stomach.  Thankfully, the tennis team had plans to go to lunch together at Buffalo Wild Wings after the invitational.  The team bonding event helped make the sting of the loss a lot better than expected.  

Cameron had great news to report on his way home tonight.  Avery had invited him to work for The Chief at a Concord Band event this evening.  Cameron was able to early $105 on the evening.  That was definitely a great way to end the day.