Nothing But Iron: Ones June 12, 2009 by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. Writers have an obligation to record history. Sometimes it is history that is monumental to those making it or invested in it, even though it is but a speck on the shaded side of a tiny dot on the time line of the history of the entire universe. (Another obligation of writers is to come up with crafty metaphors for purposes of entertainment.) Nonetheless, there was history last weekend and it must be recorded, even if just for fun. I feel an urgency to write this particular story. In fact I hope it snows today because snow is more conducive to sportswriting than sunny and 76 degrees. The historical event in question was even a blur in real time, and recall of it threatens to escape into the caverns of obscurity. So here I go. Winning state is the goal of just about every high school athlete who ever played a sport, genetically aberrant to-be millionaire athletes and Olympic-hopeful freaks of nature aside. I have my own history of winning state, but mine exists only as a memory of intense desire and unfulfilled dreams. Actually my goal was just to get to state. Not long before that I wanted to go to the Olympics, but by the time I was a sophomore I realized that I was not a freak of nature, so state it was. Or so I hoped. I grew up in basketball country, but my best shot at state was as a runner. So I ran and ran and ran and ran. Sometimes I ran the mile home after basketball practice. By the time I was a senior I had won most of my conference 800m races, including one gut-convulsing victory on a grass track. By the way, I am not that old and, no, there were no cows grazing nearby. O.K., there was one cow, but they kept it off the track during the meet. On that grass track I edged out a kid from Hazel Green, who did ultimately make it to state. I felt like I was close. But I wasn’t so close. I wasn’t so close because I needed to run a lot faster to be close. I never even got through the first round of qualifying. I remember that the top two runners advanced to sectionals. I vividly remember that I was not one of them. I remember getting stuck in the pack on the second turn and almost stumbling off the track when another runner cut me off. I remember how, in the last 50 yards of the race I felt like I was running through water. I remember the profanely profound sense of failure of the end of my high school sports career, and how it took years to realize the loss shouldn’t bother me, and several more before it didn’t. The point of my own historical perspective is that winning high-school state championships has always been like speaking Russian or surfing or riding in Learjets–something that other people did. Before this tennis season Patrick had already been far closer than I had been. He advanced to individual state in doubles a year ago, losing in the second round, and had played in the team state tournament in 2007 and 2008 (tennis has two separate state tourneys–click here for an explanation). Edgewood reached the finals in the 2007 team tourney, but U School won 5-2. In March of this year Patrick would come close again, a missed shot (his own) away from a basketball win over Monroe in the sectional final. We both understood then, as did his coaches and teammates, that his close is only marginally different from my far away in the context of winning a state title. A couple weeks after the heart-bending basketball loss the tennis season began. The first weeks were a jumble of practices, matches, weekend invitationals and roster manipulations to decipher the combination to the optimal lineup. In a move I had not anticipated, Patrick was paired with Austin, a sophomore who played singles last year. Immediately the two, who could easily be mistaken for brothers, clicked, going 5-0 against solid competition at a tournament in Milwaukee. They finished the regular season undefeated, losing only one set along the way. As fate would have it, the final regular season match was to be played against then-undefeated Monroe, the basketball nemesis. Edgewood won all seven matches. I try to discourage the distraction of retribution. I cautioned Patrick as he puffed out his chest the day before: "You’re not playing Monroe. You’re playing the ball". Retribution or not (and none of Monroe’s basketball players were on the tennis team anyway) it was the sweetest victory to that point of the season. Patrick and Austin cruised through the conference tournament and the first two rounds of the playoffs. They were awarded the second seed in the individual tournament behind the top doubles team from University School of Milwaukee, also known as U School, also known as the School of Tennis Invincibility. U School is a problem. More akin to the Great Wall than a hurdle on the path to the championship. U School has won team state 4 out of the past 5 years and owns a hopper full of individual titles. For the Wildcats, winning at state is an annual event like Mothers Day or Bratfest or the first harvest of asparagus. (You knew there would be a garden reference at some point.) U School is a big reason for the feeling of finality of our sectional basketball loss. That last shot really felt like the last shot. My friend Scott, whose son Derek also qualified for state in doubles, asked about the prospects for Patrick and Austin at state. I explained to him that at state there are so many good players that a high seeding is little more than an inflated sense of well being. If they did make it up the bracket, U School would be waiting anyway. Edgewood had outstanding doubles teams in the past two seasons, including the No. 2 seeds in both of the past two seasons. No Edgewood doubles team has finished higher than fourth place since the school joined the WIAA in 2001. My hope was that our guys, who got a bye in the first round, could at least win their second-round match so they would get to play on Saturday, even if it was in the consolation bracket (3rd-6th place). I added a perfunctory but you never know. And for those of you who think I didn’t have to look up perfunctory to be sure it was used in the proper context, I am going to let you keep thinking that. I could sense Patrick’s anxiety in the days before the match. I wondered if I should say something, but I knew that it might make it worse. I learned from Kelly that his source of anxiety was the anxiety itself: He was thinking back to his second-round match; he got so nervous he could hardly lift his racket. I decided to ask him about it and he confirmed what Kelly had said. "You know what nervous is, right?" I asked, certain that he remembered one of our lessons from the old days of dad-coach basketball. "Yeah," he smiled, "it’s the feeling of your mind getting stronger." I then reminded him how he calmly sank two free throws in the closing minutes of his last basketball game. I said I knew he would have anxiety, but I didn’t think it would be a problem this year. As we finished our discussion I told him there are people who learn to like the nervous feelings of a big event. They try to absorb the intensity, adrenalin rush and all. "It will help you remember how amazing it was that you were there." Who knows if my advice made any difference to Patrick, but it helped me. And I needed it. It helped also that I had my cameras. The task of recording the event in pictures and video gave me something to focus on (so to speak) besides all the possible ways to lose a tennis match. Patrick and Austin rolled in their first game on Friday, beating a 22-1 No. 2 doubles team from Manitowoc Roncalli 6-2, 6-0. They then beat the St. Mary’s Central pair 6-2, 6-2 to advance to the semifinals on Saturday. That afternoon Patrick’s grandfather, Rick, tried to make sure didn’t get too caught up in the early success. "You know, today was a walk in the park compared to what tomorrow will be," Rick advised. Later I took the opportunity to talk to Patrick about the utility of predictions. I quoted his grandfather and asked him to categorize the statement. "It’s a prediction," Patrick answered, knowing exactly where I was going with it. "We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but there will probably be at least one thing you don’t expect," I offered. My point was that it was not necessary to know the future and trying to predict it distracts from the necessary tasks of the present. The latter is all that really matters. I thought back to my own prediction, failing to seriously consider the possibility that Patrick and Austin might challenge for the title. They were a win way from the finals. Speaking of the unexpected, No. 1-seeded U School drew a tough match-up and lost to Prairie School in straight sets. On Saturday morning Patrick and Austin faced a team from Kelly’s high school alma mater, Appleton Xavier. They had faced the same duo on May 1, losing the first set 0-6, winning the second set 6-4 and winning the match in a hard-fought ten-point tie breaker. In other words, we knew Xavier was good. Patrick and Austin had not lost a single set since that earlier meeting. And, unpredictably, that streak continued with a 6-0, 6-4 win. The early lead seemed to shock the Xavier kids and they could not conceal their focus-stealing frustration. Patrick and Austin went up a break in the second set, but Xavier broke back. It was a battle to close out the match, which seemed on the brink of a momentum shift right up until it was over. On to the finals. Yes, the finals of the state tournament to face the No. 1 team from Roncalli. These guys had credentials. They were runners up last year losing to U School 6-4, 6-3 in the final. In this year’s tournament, they beat the team from Kohler that knocked out our No. 2-seeded doubles team in 2008 and then beat the Prairie School (4-6, 6-4, 7-5) team that ousted U School in the quarterfinals.  (Click here to see bracket.) During the break between matches I saw Patrick sitting on the bleachers. I rehearsed in my head the advice I could give him, but decided that he didn’t need any. Instead I asked, as nonchalantly as possible, if he wanted something to eat. I took it as a good sign that he was hungry, and I made the requested run to a nearby Noodles and Co. for his favorite dish. It would take more than a plate of Penne Rosa to beat Roncalli. And more there was. It was a display of high-quality tennis that I would like to experience just once. And I want to dunk too. And maybe walk on the moon for a few minutes. The beauty of the performance is that people who have never seen me play might have assumed that I was just as good as my kid and they might even think I taught him how to play. I may never play tennis in public again just to preserve that. Some of the points were almost magical, but I am the dad, so even Roncalli’s double faults had their magic. Patrick and Austin took the first set 6-3 trailing only briefly at 0-1. Could it really be so easy? I quickly extinguished that fate-tempting thought, wondering if our kids would succumb to early-lead syndrome, which so often sets the stage for dramatic three-set heroics. On the other hand, they were used to big leads and tended to manage them well. As it turned out, they didn’t succumb to much of anything, winning the second set 6-2 to take the title. Patrick volleyed a winner on the fourth match point. I guess you could say he made the last shot after all. There were high-fives and yells and cheers and fist pumps and hugs everywhere. I felt such gratitude for the support of their teammates, classmates and the other parents. There was so much elation, it would have been hard for an outsider to tell exactly which Edgewood players had actually won. Though I lacked media credentials, I followed a group of Edgewood teammates down to the court to take pictures. I fired away as the TV guys interviewed the smiling champions. Kelly was close behind. My favorite image: the one of her, teary-eyed, hugging Patrick. Even as I write this it seems improbable. Improbable makes it that much more fun. I guess I failed, partly because it is often said our conference and sectional competition is weak, to realize how good Patrick and Austin were getting. I was happy to have videotaped most of the points in the semis and the final. Filming tennis is so much different than basketball, and only this year have I figured out the formula. The timing could not have been better. Already I have watched many of the clips. If I had better web building skills I would put them on the web site for you to share. I know I should not predict, but I predict that you would be impressed. Maybe I can learn. I’ll let you know. If I was not completely over my own failure to get to state, I am now. If I could choose between winning state and having my kid win state, it would not even be close–the kid’s win wins, which brings me to the moral of the story: We should allow for the possibilities, even those we consider to be mostly impossible. That would be my advice to the team as it prepares for tomorrow’s team state tournament. It is the sixth year in a row that Edgewood has made it to state. It has never won a championship. The Crusaders will face Xavier in the first round. If they win, U School awaits them in the finals. But then again, I suppose that’s a prediction . . . _______________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column written with factual intent, a presumption of objectivity and, if not those things, a bit of parental pride. The author congratulates Patrick for the physical and mental wherewithal to overcome his father’s contribution to his genetic profile. Special thanks to the author’s wife, Kelly, herself a high-school state qualifier and a five-time grown-up USTA state champion, for her gift of dominant tennis genes to our offspring. Immeasurable gratitude to Austin for being my son’s amazing tennis partner and to his parents Tom and Deb for making him. This issue is dedicated to the players, coaches and managers of the Edgewood boys tennis team, and to our wonderful fans for their support during the tournament. ©2009 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.