The Snipers captained by Chris Kyper are the 2011 USTA 4.5 Men’s National Champions! On October 30, 2011 around Noon in Tucson, AZ, my Delaware 4.5 Men’s team (Snipers) captured the USTA National Championship. Chris Kyper led his team to a perfect 21-0 record. Our team is in the Middle States section and this is the first National Championship at any level for Middle States in a while.
Before we qualified for Nationals we had to play a full regular season in Delaware and finish in the top two in order to qualify for Delaware District
playoffs in July. Winning Delaware Districts over the Marauders was a significant accomplishment as they win almost every year. The Marauders played us tough at Districts and with the no-ad scoring format that was used (due to the heat) we were happy to advance. This win gave us entry into the Middle States Sectional Championships in late August. Middle States is 1 of 17 sections in the nation and is comprised of 6 districts (New Jersey, Delaware, Western PA, Central PA, Eastern PA and Philadelphia). We went 5-0 in round robin play at Sectionals which earned us the right to compete at Nationals.
In the National championship tournament, the sections are divided randomly into 4 flights and you play in a round robin format with the best record in each flight advancing to the final four; the semi-finals and finals. In our flight we faced teams from Duluth MN (Northern Section), Milford NH (New England Section) and Fort Wayne IN (Mid-West Section). In the semi-finals we faced a great team from Seattle WA (Pacific Northwest Section) and in the final we played a team from Los Angeles CA (Southern Cal Section).
My goals for this post is to highlight the events and participants, to explain how we did it and also what’s involved with assembling a team that can
compete for a National Championship. I have captained two teams that have made it to Mixed Nationals (2008 & 2010) and I’d group the responses received into a few categories which are primarily supporters and conspiracy theorists. In terms of the supporters; the calls, emails, texts and words of congratulations are wonderful, thank you. For the conspiracy theorists; my hope is that by reading this you gain a better understanding of how we did this. The bottom line is that winning a National Championship is difficult, rare and a tremendous accomplishment. Our captain Chris Kyper, co-captain John Ellis and all of our players deserve a ton of credit and recognition for this splendid accomplishment.
We had 22 guys on the team and 11 made the trip to Nationals in Tucson, AZ. The 11 that traveled were not our absolute best but with that said, we had our key players. This was fortunate as some of the other teams were missing some of their very best players and that’s always an important variable in post season play.
Our trip got off to a good start and everyone traveled to Tucson one to three days before the tournament. This gave us time to acclimate to the desert conditions and the high elevation. Tucson is 2600’ up and that makes the balls fly off your racket a bit. It’s wise to string up a few pounds, pronate your grip a little more and practice in these conditions.
On Thursday, the day before Nationals started, we all hit for 2-3 hours. We attended the USTA player banquet and enjoyed a pleasant buffet filled with some interesting Halloween costumes. The winner of the best costume contest was the crocodile hunter complete with a life size inflatable croc and he had the Aussie accent to boot. Second place was “breasts” with two women joined together with a kickball under their shirts. After the banquet we watched Game 6 of the World Series and since our captain is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan it was really fun to watch. The lead seemed to change hands like a basketball game and when the game ended we were all left stunned by the turn of events. The team got a good rest and we prepared for our first two matches on Friday at 10:30am and 3:30pm.
First up we faced the Duluth MN team which was representing the Northern section. This was a decent team and the only team to take a set off of our co-captain John Ellis. Northern raced to 6-2 first set win at 1st dubs (John Ellis and Nick Gallagher’s court) and the other doubles courts looked to be close. We had things well in hand at singles with our top guy Ryan Gargullo on auto-pilot at 1st singles and Alex Tanzio playng great at #2 singles. At 2nd dubs Joe Ferry and Jared Howat won a tough match in a 3rd set breaker and we ended up winning this match dropping only 3rd doubles. Whew! So far, so good…
The 2nd match of the day was against the New England section winner, a team from Milford, NH. This team was the weakest in our group and must have had some player shortages and/or injuries. They lost all five courts in their first match and we ended up taking all five courts as well. This set up a Saturday match against the other 2-0 team in our flight; the Ft. Wayne, IN team who was 10-0 in individual matches (each match is the best of five courts – 2 singles and 3 doubles). Since the Fort Wayne team had only lost one individual set in two team matches, we were all a little nervous.
Friday night we went to dinner and debated our lineup choices ad nauseam. We went round and round and at 10:30pm while sitting in our hotels beautiful outdoor hot tub (and before being booted from our hotel’s beautiful hot tub) we got into it again and finally reached a consensus. Then, the following morning at 8am, a half hour before our lineup was due to be submitted, co-captain John Ellis knocked on our hotel door (I was staying with Chris Kyper) and we got into it one last time. John and Chris went round and round and were mostly in favor of making a move that I disagreed with. Since John Ellis and Ryan Gargullo are our best two singles players the idea was to win these two courts and hope for a doubles win which would mean 3 courts and thus a team win. I was happy to be quiet and listen as I didn’t want a loss on my shoulders but when Chris asked, “Russell, what would you do?” I sighed and said, “you have to play Oliver Jones at singles, he won’t lose at Nationals.” This sparked further dialog but in the end Chris and John decided to play Oliver at singles.
Our lineup was formulated by a few hours of research on the Ft. Wayne team, Google searches and our best guesses on what they would do. We thought that they had a singles player who wouldn’t lose all tournament and a doubles ace who was equally as good. They had a history of moving their lineup around so we really didn’t know what to expect. Our strategy was to lead with Ryan Gargullo at 1st singles because our hopes rested on his shoulders and if he couldn’t get it done then we weren’t going to win Nationals. We played Oliver Jones at #2 singles and our doubles lineup of John Ellis/Nick Gallagher, Joe Ferry/Jared Howat and Jason Goldman-Petri (JGP)/Trevor Anderson. What happened was their #1 guy was injured and he played 1st doubles. Their #1 doubles guy (Brian Becker) played #1 singles and he won easily at singles in the 2nd Friday match. Their doubles courts were strong and the one guy they had at 3rd doubles may have been the best doubles guy in the tournament.
At #1 singles, we won in straight sets with Ft. Wayne’s Becker forcing Ryan Gargullo into a 2nd set tiebreaker. Becker was the 2nd best player we faced all weekend and he hit the snot out of almost every shot, especially his flat serves. He is a tremendous athlete. Ollie (Oliver Jones) was amazing at #2 singles and he won a 3rd set match tiebreaker against an 18 year old, 6’5″ stub with a tremendous kick serve. We had 2 match points at 1st doubles and this was the only contentious match of the tournament. We won 2nd doubles with a great performance by John & Nick and we got smushed at 3rd doubles for a 3-2 team win and birth into the semi-final round. Yippee!
We dined at PF Changs Saturday night and again got a good rest for our 7:30am match and (hopefully) 10am match on Sunday. I was scrambling to change my flight and then the lineup debates started in earnest.
Our strategy for the semi-final match was based on the fact that the Seattle team had won only one singles court all weekend. To counter that we played our best singles player at doubles to bolster our own doubles lineup and paired John Ellis with Jared Howat to make yet another “super” doubles team. This left us with weaker singles and two very strong doubles team.
The semi-final match against the team from Seattle was pretty much over when lineups were submitted because we hit the lineup perfectly. They threw 1st singles thinking they’d get Ryan Gargullo. They took their best guy and put him at #2 singles. With the rest of their guys they played their typically strong doubles lineup straight up. Their #1 doubles team had not lost all year. We won 1st and 2nd doubles with our newly formed teams and we split singles for the 3-2 victory. This was our only singles loss of the tournament so a special congratulations goes to our singles guys: Ryan Gargullo, Oliver Jones, and Alex Tanzio. And while I’m on the topic of individual accomplishments, Ryan Gargullo, John Ellis, Oliver Jones
and Nick Gallagher all went undefeated at Nationals.
For the finals we weren’t sure what to do so we went back to the Mid-West lineup except that we inverted singles with Ryan playing #2 for the first time all weekend. They put their best singles guy, Michael Smith who was the equal if not better than Ryan Gargullo at 2nd singles. The slight difference was that Ryan played doubles in the 7:30am match and Michael played singles. Ryan was a tad fresher and roughly 10 years younger. Both guys were hitting bombs; the points were high quality and long. It was an epic match which Ryan won 10-5 in the match tiebreaker.
By the time this court finished we had already won #1 singles (Oliver Jones) and #1 doubles (John Ellis and Nick Gallagher) so we rushed the court and celebrated. In the dog
pile I saw Joe Ferry and Jared Howat who were still playing their doubles match. I even saw some tears on my teammate’s faces. Shortly after, Trevor Anderson and Jason Goldman-Petri won their court as well.
So what is the key to our 21-0 season? It’s the Randomizer of course. John Ellis was able to pack our well used mystery machine into his luggage for Nationals and we used it for every match (you can also use it by going to randomizer.org). We decided pairings for each match but the decision to play 1st, 2nd or 3rd doubles or even 1st or 2nd singles was handled by the Randomizer. In our last 3 matches, if the Randomizer didn’t get it exactly right, we probably would not have advanced. But then again, the randomizer worked perfectly all season long.
Here’s the recipe for success. You need some youth on your team. No, not because younger guys are just better but because they typically have less injuries and can play back to back matches with their level of play only dropping slightly. To win, you also need an organized captain, a responsive team, good research and plenty of luck. I had expected to see mostly younger players at Nationals and I saw the opposite. Most of the players were well into their 30s and I even saw several seniors playing singles – but then again youth still helps.
Another reason we were able to capture Nationals was Chris Kyper’s tireless efforts to recruit players and we had a player from Baltimore and various Philadelphia area players.
And yet another reason was Chris Kyper took his Philadelphia District team to District playoffs and defeated the Kinetix/Ambler team which had 3 of our starters at Nationals on it. Kinetix/Amber was a big favorite to win and if Chris’s Philly team didn’t win Districts our Sectional and National lineups would have been devoid of Ryan Gargullo, Alex Tanzio and Joe Ferry. This concentration of talent from the Middle States section gave us an edge. It’s incredible that Chris was so successful with his Philly team and he told me that in the beginning of the season he didn’t expect to make playoffs in the Philadelphia District.
When I say parity at Nationals – you betcha. Most of the teams were quite even. There was very little separation and it came down to strategy and the ability to execute on court. I saw a great Southern team that has 4 match points to advance to the Finals round when they were up 9-6 in the 3rd set match tiebreaker with the team match tied 2-2. In my mind, Southern was the team to beat. The unofficial consensus that I heard from spectators at Nationals was that the LA team we played had the most impressive strokes from a pure tennis perspective followed by Southern and nobody seemed to be saying much about Middle States. I think what separated us was perfect lineups, a team that could mostly get their top players out with no major injuries (but lots of minor ones) and great execution.
Tucson in late October is a beautiful place with the morning temps in the high 40s and afternoon highs in the upper 80s during the day. Our resort had a beautiful compound with a large pool, tennis courts, lime trees and grapefruit trees. There seems to be no clouds in Tucson and the scenery is fantastic. We are the champs now but with that said, how are we going to repeat next year?
