New look for boys tennis team

by Eric Keppeler
Grand Island Dispatch, April 20, 2007

For the first time in eight years, the Grand Island boys tennis team has a new man at the helm.

After veteran coach Don Pray decided to step down in order to spend more time with his family, first-year man Dan Sweeney has stepped in and looks to continue the upward trend of improvement that typified Pray’s tenure.

Sweeney has spent the past two years as a modified basketball coach but also has a lot of experience with recreational tennis. And the basics from that forum translate into the high school game much better than he imagined.

“I’m able to help these kids a lot more than I thought I could at first,” Sweeney said. “Especially after you get past the top couple. We’ve got 26 players on the team and only seven of them can play varsity, so the rest are paying their dues and learning the game.”

Sweeney also helped himself by picking an able assistant coach in former Viking tennis standout Steve Asbach, who graduated four years ago from Grand Island and went to the state tournament as a singles player.

The coaching staff has some good talent coming back from last year. Senior Matt Scibilia takes over at first singles after playing second singles last year. Second singles this year goes to senior Pierre Tanguay, who was part of Grand Island’s first doubles team last season. The third singles position goes to Jared Kazmierczak, who was an exhibition player last year but has shown amazing improvement and earned the job, according to Sweeney.

All of the singles spots were not difficult to determine, said the coach.

“It’s easy to tell the top talent,” Sweeney said. “In singles, you just have them play each other a few times, and the best player usually wins. That’s easy. It’s finding the right doubles pairings that is a lot harder. You have to find the right chemistry between the players, and look at what they both do well. You have to make sure their skills are balanced.”

With that in mind, the doubles teams are not yet settled, and the unusually cold weather hasn’t helped Sweeney to sort things out. He’s fairly certain that Korey DiMatteo, Scott Holler and Jacob Ferrante will play singles, although he’s not sure yet about which combination works best together.

The fourth element in doubles will be a rotation between Travis Rockwood, Todd Kunze and Luke Chambers, unless one of them really distinguishes himself during the season.

Sweeney figures that the Vikings will be right in the thick of things in the Niagara Frontier League when the good weather finally does decide to put in an appearance.

“It’s hard to tell what we’re capable of at this point,” Sweeney said. “We should be strong and competitive, and in the top half of the league. I’m not sure if we have all of the pieces right now to contend for the league championship, but we’ll definitely push some people.”