Matikainen, Lancers get off the schneid

by Eric Keppeler
Lewiston Porter Sentinel, April 28, 2007

The last time that the Lewiston-Porter boys tennis team won a match, Tom Matikainen was in fourth grade.

Matikainen had already started to play tennis by that point, although he never dreamed that he’d someday play a key role in helping the Lancers snap a losing streak that would stretch over seven years.

Now a junior co-captain, Matikainen is a fixture at first doubles and helped the Lancers to a 3-2 win over Kenmore East last week. The win has given an enormous lift to players who have played their entire high school careers without ever knowing victory.

“It changes everything,” Matikainen said. “We’ve been working really hard, and now a lot of the other teams have lost their best players to graduation. In past years, we’ve had some strong players – but they’ve been the younger players that we knew we had to develop. Now it’s starting to pay off.”

At the start of the season, senior Marty Krimmel – a foreign exchange student from Germany – was selected by the players to be the team’s captain. Krimmel, however, has been kept off the court by red tape in the exchange process.

The players also selected Matikainen as their co-captain.

“He brings leadership skills to the table,” Lew-Port coach Mike Townsend said. “He’s soft-spoken but certainly respected by the rest of the team. As a junior, he senses that his growth process hinges not only on how the team does, but also on how he does as a co-captain in shaping the team.”

For his part, Matikainen says he’s honored to be chosen to lead the team. He also admits that it was anything but easy to be a leader on a team that had gone so long without success.

That’s another reason why the win has had such an impact.

“It was pretty tough – you can ask anybody on the team,” Matikainen said. “We would go out there and try our hardest, and we’d lose every time. It really put your spirits down, but it had gotten to the point where we were used to it.”

Now that the monkey is off their backs, the Lancers now realize that they can win, and that makes all the difference.

“A big part of it is mental,” Matikainen said. “Even over the past few years, I think we’ve played very well at times, but the competition has been really tough. We’ve steadily gotten better, and now we know we can win.”

The Lancers are realistic about their season, understanding that they’re not quite ready to challenge for the Niagara Frontier League title just yet.

But they know they’re better now than when they started the season, and that starts at the top.

“When the season started, Tom was clearly our No. 1 player, aside from Marty, but we couldn’t count Marty at that point,” Townsend said. “Since then, we’ve had a couple of people come out and join our team and strengthen it, but Tom is still the top-ranked person on our team. He’s very consistent and he never gives up. I think that bodes well for the team that he leads.”