IHS tennis leading Section IV under new coach

This year was unique for Ithaca High School tennis. Both the girls and boys teams shared a season this spring, while the girls team typically plays in the fall. They also were both under new leadership, with Matthew Prokosch taking over as the head coach for both teams.

Those changes have not slowed down the Little Red, as the girls team is undefeated at 4-0 and the boys team is 3-1 heading into the end-of-year Section IV Invitational. Coaching two varsity teams in the same season comes with its challenges, especially for Prokosch, who had no coaching experience before this year. But he’s been learning on the fly and leading both teams to success.

“I’ve really enjoyed it,” Prokosch said. “So far, it’s been a lot of work managing the schedules and the listservs. We do practice separately. There’s just a lot of moving parts in the average week. It would be a little bit easier if the teams were separated by seasons, but learning how to create a good cohesive practice schedule, that’s brand new to me. I’m on YouTube every single night looking up drills.”

In addition to getting some help in the transition from former girls coach Mari Mitchell, the eight senior tennis players at IHS have helped Prokosch get adjusted to the position. Several younger players have stepped into bigger roles this year as well, setting the stage for a successful future.

“The seniors themselves were just so supportive of helping me transition, and same with the younger players — they really stepped up,” Prokosch said. “The younger group, I think they got used to my style. I think it will be a nice and cohesive group for both teams next year.”

Another factor that is unique to this year is the length of matches. In a normal season, matches are best of three sets. This year, however, matches are one set of nine games. The shorter matches make things more difficult for teams on the road, providing less of an opportunity to bounce back from a slow start. The boys team’s lone loss this year was on the road against Corning.

“When you get [to] Corning, it’s 55 minutes from Ithaca,” Prokosch said. “We get off the bus and we literally have 10 minutes to warm up. It’s literally 33 degrees outside. I’ve noticed this year, my team takes a while in a match just to get into their groove and get warmed up. By the time they do that in a nine-game pro set, it’s tough to come back.”

The loss to Corning was the first in a dual meet for the Ithaca boys since 2012. The Little Red were able to get back on track and defeat Corning next time they met.

“After we had that kind of fluke of a loss, I really impressed upon them to come out with their guns out,” Prokosch said. “It seemed to work the second time around. Our singles had completely opposite results. When we played the second time, they really came out swinging. They were just crushing their serves. It felt really good to take that one back.”

The Section IV Invitational between Ithaca, Corning and Horseheads will take place June 5 in Corning starting at 9 a.m., and the 12 players Ithaca will be sending have been selected. They are Jerry Qian, Talia Shaw, Adele Giovannoni, Henry Sigel, Andrew Brown, David Guan, Paula Carrillo, Liala Cryer, Anna Cohen, Tess Crane, Eli Simons and Dennis Kang.

Half of these players will be returning next year when the Section IV Championship will be held. This weekend’s invitational will give the returning players valuable experience with postseason tennis.

“Invitational sectionals I’m looking forward to because it’s going to give the younger players a taste of what sectionals is going to be like,” Prokosch said. “I’m really going to rely on those three underclassmen to really gain some experience from this. This will model sectionals for future years, and they’ll really lead the team next year.”

Routines were shaken up this year with the boys team missing a season and the girls team having theirs delayed by several months. Offseason work was crucial to make sure the team was ready for the beginning of the year.

“We basically all started from the same level as soon as we began in April,” Prokosch said. “I thought they actually recovered quickly. At Ithaca High School, we have an amazing weight room, so we utilized that at the beginning of the season. I was impressed with their conditioning given that pretty much most of these players haven’t done much physical activity in over a year, or the guys, two years.”

Both teams have picked up where they left off, establishing themselves as the top Class AA teams in the section. They’ll be able to prove that on Saturday in the Section IV Invitational, which will feature singles, doubles and mixed doubles tournaments.