Knights take down Danville, earn first win of season | Brazil Times
At the start of the boys high school tennis season, Northview head coach Emily Goff emphasized the need for her team to just get on the court and play.
The Knights are young and inexperienced this fall, and because of that, Goff wants to see daily improvement from them in hopes that wins will be recorded down the road.
On Tuesday against visiting Danville, Northview not only improved after dropping its season opener to Vincennes Lincoln over the weekend, but it also picked up its first victory of the fall, beating the Warriors 4-1.
“I’m going to say this a million times this year, but we are so inexperienced. Even the players that have varsity experience – sophomores Carter Goff and Isaiah Hellmann – are playing singles for the first time after playing doubles all of last year. It’s new for everyone this year, so I was really proud of them for stepping up and getting the first win under our belts,” said Goff. “I’m hoping everyone can breathe a little easier now.”
The three players atop Northview’s lineup on Tuesday – No. 1 Carter Goff, No. 2 Isaiah Hellmann and No. 3 Peyton McCollum – earned their first career varsity wins as singles players by beating their opponents in straight sets.
Goff breezed through his match, winning 6-0, 6-0.
“Carter played great tonight,” said Goff. “He played smart. He doesn’t kill the ball, but he can place it around the court, which worked well for him tonight.”
Hellmann and McCollum were tested a little more, specifically in the second set of each of their matches when they both faced deficits, but the pair fought through it to finish off their own wins to secure Northview’s first of the year.
“Isaiah controlled the match much better tonight. He fought back after getting down in the second half and won. Peyton, like Isaiah, won his first set pretty easily and then got down 4-5 in the second set and then came back and won 7-5, so that was great to see,” Goff said. “We talked about the ‘Never give up’ attitude a bunch last season, and they showed that tonight. We have a bunch of athletes on the team that want to win, and they were determined to do that.”
Northview also got a point from its No. 2 doubles team of Cooper Haviland and Jaxson Kent who defeated Danville’s Carter Darks and Lukas Woodruff by respective scores of 6-1, 6-3 to wrap up an exciting evening for the Knights.
Afterwards, Goff said that while there is still plenty of work that will need to be done to continue pushing forward in a positive direction, she saw several reasons to be optimistic about how far her group has come in a short amount of time, and more importantly, the level they can eventually reach in the future.
“I saw a lot of positives tonight. We had a lot of improvements from Saturday,” said Goff. “We still have a long way to go, but to see some of our players come back and get wins was great. This was a good win.”
Northview 4, Danville 1
Singles – Carter Goff (Nv) def. Colby Brooks (D) 6-0, 6-0; Isaiah Hellmann (Nv) def. Grant Spehger (D) 6-3, 6-4; Peyton McCollum (Nv) def. Sam McRoberts (D) 6-3, 7-5
Doubles – Oliver Riggs-Liam Stierwalt (D) def. Isaac Rissler-Trace Wilson (Nv) 6-3, 6-0; Cooper Haviland-Jaxson Kent (Nv) def. Carter Darks-Lukas Woodruff (D) 6-1, 6-3