Meyers Serves, Strides for Norrix Fall Teams
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
August 21, 2017
KALAMAZOO — Finding a face in a crowd of 357 runners erupting down a hillside all at once could be a daunting task.
But spotting sophomore Joe Meyers is easy, said Greg Savicke.
“He’ll be one of the ones out front,” the Kalamazoo Loy Norrix coach predicted.
That was true at Friday’s Portage Central Early Bird Invitational, where Meyers finished 14th with a time of 17 minutes, 12 seconds.
That sounds like a great time for a first race of the season, but Meyers was not celebrating.
“I had a pretty bad race,” he said. “I was training in Colorado for like a month with my new coach, and I put in a lot of training.
“I should have been well in the 16s. It was just not a good race.”
He didn’t have much time to fret.
The two-sport athlete had his first tennis match of the season Monday.
He’s playing No. 2 singles for the Knights after putting together a 21-5 record at the same flight last year.
Juggling two fall sports is not a problem for the amiable Meyers, with tennis taking priority.
“We work around the tennis schedule,” said Savicke, in his 29th year as Norrix’s head cross country coach. “We get Joe when he’s available. Early in the season it’s not so much, but down the stretch, yes.
“That’s the championship part of our season for us, in October, so we get him for the most important meets coming up.”
Both sports are in Meyers’ DNA.
His mother, Jody, got him on the tennis court when he was 5 and just playing for fun.
“Then I quit and mainly played hockey for years until seventh grade, then picked up tennis again,” he said.
He started running with his father, John, at age 9.
As a freshman, “I didn’t really want to pick one because I knew I could do pretty good in both,” Joe Meyers said. “It worked out last year.”
Both are individual sports, but in running, “you have to definitely have a lot more drive to go out and run by yourself because you can have a lot of excuses not to,” he said.
“In tennis, you go to group and you have to try as hard as you can. I don’t really get as tired in matches (since I’ve been) running.”
Meyers works out with sophomore Reed Crocker, Norrix’s No. 1 singles player.
Crocker qualified for the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals last season, losing his top-flight title match, 7-6(6), 3-6, 7-6(8), to top-seeded Varun Shanker of Midland Dow.
The only way Meyers will make it to the Finals is if Loy Norrix as a team qualifies, since the No. 1 player is the only individual eligible if the team falls short at Regionals. The No. 1 singles champion and runner-up at Regionals advance to Finals play even if their teams do not qualify.
“We have a better chance (as a team) this year,” Crocker said. “The team’s looking better.
“We’ve been doing a lot of sprints, a lot. (Sunday) was an easy day. We only ran a mile” before practice.
Crocker said Meyers pushes him to be better.
“Joe is like the marathon runner, so it helps me with conditioning and it helps me on the court because I know he can help build the wins,” Crocker said.
“We hit together, and he pushes me get better. I’ve had the joy to hit with him the last year or so because he joined my coach (Bill Jenkins, who is also Norrix’s head coach).”
Jenkins, in his third season with the Knights, has coached tennis for 38 years.
Meyers possesses a “good work ethic, and genetics are very much in his favor as far as a force in track,” Jenkins said. “He’s built for it in tennis as well.
“He’s also extremely coachable so he has a very good perspective, very good mindset and disposition for tennis. He’s extremely intense, extremely passionate and competitive, but he’s also very level-headed, so he’s able to channel a lot of that energy into proper use.”
Jenkins said, in his experience, it is unusual to have an athlete be so successful in two sports in the same season.
“He’s got very set dreams but he works at them on a daily basis, knowing that the only way to achieve them is through his commitment,” the coach said.
“Regardless of whatever natural distractions may come up, he seems to stay on track very diligently and is years ahead of his time.”
While Meyers needs the team to qualify for the MHSAA Finals in tennis, he has a much better shot of earning a berth in cross country.
Last year, then-senior Gabe Runyon was the only Norrix runner to qualify for the Lower Peninsula Division 1 competition at Michigan International Speedway.
Meyers just missed qualifying, finishing 21st at his Regional with a time of 17:04. The top 15 runners moved on.
Savicke lost Runyon and four of his other top seven runners to graduation this spring, noting that Meyers has moved up from second in the order to become the team’s top runner.
Meyers has improved on his 2016 Regional time and has an unofficial personal best of 16:30. He has hit 17:00 in a race, and his short-term goal is to get into the 16s during competition.
Said Savicke: “Joe’s father was a runner in high school for (Kalamazoo) Hackett in the 1980s, and he’s really active in bicycling and running events. He’s brought Joe along with him.
“I think that just paid dividends with his running abilities. I saw Joe in middle school, so I knew he would be a good fit for us.”
Norrix’s next cross country meet is Thursday with Meyers leading a varsity contingent of junior Will Carrier, senior Zach Skinner, sophomore Myles Baker, junior Rowan Mathieson, senior Garrett Bloom and sophomore Erick Ponce.
Once the fall season is over, Meyers does not plan to leave sports behind.
He bicycles and was the Michigan Bicycle Racing Association road race junior state and point series champ a year ago and “might pick up hockey or swimming this year,” he said.
In the spring, he is part of the varsity track & field team, competing in the 1,600, 3,200 and 3,200 relay.
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Kalamazoo Loy Norrix sophomore Joe Meyers returns a volley during a tennis practice Sunday. (Middle) Clockwise from top left: Meyers, tennis teammate Reed Crocker, Knights’ boys tennis coach Bill Jenkins, Knights’ boys cross country coach Greg Savicke. (Below) Meyers pushes ahead of a pack during Friday’s Early Bird race at Portage Central. (Photos by Pam Shebest.)
Senior-Led Hackett Loaded for 2020 Run
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
September 9, 2020
KALAMAZOO — Game days, Nicholas DeForest can be found sitting alone on the bleachers, autographed cast on his wrist, while his teammates compete on the tennis courts.
Slated for the No. 1 singles spot, the senior from Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Prep still has a couple weeks until he will join the lineup.
“It’s really frustrating, but it’s still awesome to watch the team perform and excel,” said DeForest, whose dad Marc DeForest is the team’s assistant coach.
Rather than plopping someone else in the top spot, Hackett head coach Aaron Conroy defaults the point.
So far, that has not hurt the reigning Lower Peninsula Division 4 co-champ.
After defeating Kalamazoo Christian, 7-1, last Wednesday, the Irish are 3-0-1.
The tie came against perennial power Traverse City St. Francis.
In this season’s first Michigan High School Tennis Coaches Association rankings, two weeks ago, Hackett was the top-ranked team in Division 4. Hackett remains No. 1 this week, with St. Francis No. 2.
That bodes well for the senior-laden Irish, who lost just three players from last year’s team that shared the title with Allegan.
Eight of this fall’s 12 starters are seniors.
“The unique thing about this is that for most of the guys, their primary sport is not tennis,” Conroy said.
“It’s really just 10 or 12 guys who decided to come play high school tennis a few years ago. They stuck at it and worked hard.”
One of the seniors, Sam Magnell, is back after opting to play football with his brother Gus, then a senior, last year.
Sam’s biggest regret: Missing out on last year’s Finals championship.
Doubles specialists
Magnell, playing No. 2 doubles with senior Anthony Toweson, said communication is a huge part of a good doubles team.
“If you can execute well at the net and communicate well with your partner, you will do really well on a doubles court,” added Magnell, who also played lacrosse and basketball.
Two seniors who do that well are Ben Bridenstine and Rhodes Conroy at No. 1 doubles.
Bridenstine lost in the LPD4 semifinals at No. 3 singles last year.
Aaron Conroy explained the move to doubles: “We lost two quality seniors last year in Blake DeForest, half of our 1 doubles team, and Connor Cavanaugh, half of our No. 2 doubles team.
“We had to shift somebody. Ben and Rhodes played doubles two years ago and had some success at 3 doubles early on.”
Both standing 6-foot-2, the lanky seniors take a strong net game into each match.
“We love coming to the net,” said Rhodes Conroy, who also plays lacrosse and basketball. “It’s tough to hit the ball over us, and it’s tough to hit the ball through us.
“Tennis is much more quick feet and a lot more working your legs out (than the other two sports). Tennis really helps me with quick hands for lacrosse and for basketball.”
Bridenstine would love nothing more than to get back to the state tournament. He already has two championship medals; he also was part of Hackett’s 2019 LPD4 championship golf team.
The senior said it is nice to have a partner on the court this year and the pair are having fun, especially with a 4-0 record so far.
“Singles is more running around, more groundstrokes, and switching to doubles is more action-packed at the net, which I like: volleying the ball, hitting overheads,” Bridenstine said.
As defending LPD4 champs, “We know everybody will be out gunning for us, trying to beat us,” Bridenstine added. “But I don’t think we feel a lot of pressure because we’re returning nine of the same guys, so we know what to do.”
Ford a ‘fireball’
Although the Irish had no individual champions at last year’s Finals, they made championship matches in three flights, including at No. 2 singles with current senior Jack Ford.
“Jack Ford’s a fireball,” the coach said. “That’s the best word I can use. He’s a fiery guy who plays with a lot of energy, and he’s very athletic on the court
“He’s actually a better athlete than he is a tennis player. He outworks guys.”
Ford said he was surprised the team did so well last season, and he learned from the experience.
“It taught me that anything is possible because we had no idea we were going to even make it to the (state) tournament last year,” he said. “We weren’t in the top 10 discussion, but come the state tournament our team just switched gears and all of us played some of our best tennis.”
Although he played USTA tournaments when he was younger, Ford opted for football his freshman year at Otsego High School before transferring to Hackett.
“Tennis is my favorite, hands down,” he said. “After the break playing football and coming back to tennis, I started enjoying it a lot more.”
Rounding out the singles flights this season are a pair of sophomores, Tommy Kling at No. 3 and Niklas Johansson at No. 4.
“Tommy is our one guy that tennis is his primary sport,” Conroy said. “He works hard at it.
“He made it to the state semi last year as a freshman, which is a very nice result. He moved up to 3 this year and will see some stiff competition.”
Johansson jumped from No. 4 doubles to singles this year.
“The way he plays the game, he’s more conducive to be a singles player,” Conroy said of the move.
“He’s a solid guy. Another sophomore who has a lot of tennis left in him.”
Junior Jack Gordon and sophomore Marcus Alcaraz play at No. 3 doubles.
“Marcus is one of our newcomers,” Conroy said. “Jack was at No. 4 doubles for us both years and has a lot of doubles experience under his belt.”
Seniors Toby Alcaraz and David Chafty are slotted at No. 4 doubles.
“It’s Toby’s first year full-time in varsity lineup,” Conroy said. “He’s a talented 4 doubles player. David was half of 3 doubles last year with his brother Matthew, who is not playing this year.”
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Prep’s Rhodes Conroy (left) returns a shot as partner Ben Bridenstine backs him up. (Middle) From left: Jack Ford, Sam Magnell and coach Aaron Conroy. (Below) Hackett No. 1 singles player Nicholas DeForest, his injured wrist in a cast, watches his teammate defeat Kalamazoo Christian on Sept. 2. (Photos by Pam Shebest.)