FORTVILLE — Mt. Vernon just keeps rolling along.
With a bunch of seniors in their lineup, the Marauders have rattled off six straight wins to open the season after a 4-1 victory against Anderson on Wednesday.
They are the last undefeated tennis team in Hancock County, earning them a spot in the rankings they haven’t achieved in years.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
“We’re back in the district rankings for the first time since 2015, we’ve got guys with a lot of experience, a senior dominated lineup, so that’s what we should be doing if we’re doing things correctly,” Mt. Vernon coach Gabe Muterspaugh said. “I think it’s a trickle-down effect, honestly. Not to give all the credit, but coach (Mike) Kirschner, and I’ve had that same mentality, but when the whole athletic department is believing that you can win, it trickles down.
“Our guys have bought into that and they believe they can win every match.”
Kirschner, the first-year football coach at Mt. Vernon, has brought a winning culture and an emphasis on the weight room to the school.
That’s making a difference across many sports, including tennis, Muterspaugh said.
His team cruised to a quick win Wednesday behind the strength of its doubles play and its senior leadership. The No. 2 doubles team of Sam Frye and Jackson Dunlavy won 6-1, 6-0 and the No. 1 doubles team of Peyton Meadors and Braeden Browning weren’t far behind, winning 6-1, 6-1.
Sam McCarty picked up a 6-0, 6-0 win at No. 3 singles, and Chris Hays won 6-0, 6-2 at No. 2 singles.
The only blemish was at No. 1 singles, where J.D. Cohee fought hard but lost in a super-tiebreaker, 2-6, 7-5, 1-10.
Still, between McCarty and the doubles teams, the Marauders picked up the win in under an hour, keeping momentum rolling forward into a tough stretch of the schedule.
The strong start to the season isn’t a big surprise to one of the team’s seniors, five of which were in the starting seven on Wednesday.
“I definitely saw it,” McCarty said of the undefeated start. “Every day, people were bringing it at practice. Coach does a really good job of finding who works well together and plays well together.”
The big thing the Marauders are doing, according to their coach, is stepping up on game days.
Practices haven’t always been the best, but when it matters, when a win is on the line, the Marauders are up to the task.
“We’re always striving for that,” Muterspaugh said of starting 6-0. “There were practice days where I said we may not win a match. You have to do it when the lights come on, and our guys are doing it when the lights come on. We believe we can beat anybody.”
The Marauders are going to find out just how good they are very quickly. A match against Hoosier Heritage Conference foe Yorktown awaits tonight. Two top 30 teams await Saturday in the Richmond Invitational. Then it’s Greenfield-Central, Lawrence North and Shelbyville next week before the county tournament.
To get to one of their big goals, though, the Marauders are going to have to beat the big teams.
At the top of that list is county rival New Palestine.
The Dragons have simply dominated the county for much of the past decade, winning eight straight county titles and six straight sectionals. They are the defending HHC champions.
Mt. Vernon knows its road to a county or sectional title will likely go through the Dragons.
“We’ve been down the last couple of years, and not big-time down, but just not getting over that New Pal hump, and it is what it is,” Muterspaugh said. “We know what we’ve got to do. Because our guys and girls practice a lot together, our guys have now taken on the mentality of our girls — come in, get your work in and have fun. These guys are busting it, and that’s what we want.”
The five seniors in the current starting seven — Cohee, McCarty, Meadors, Browning and Frye — provide leadership, experience and motivation for the younger players on the team, which, on Wednesday, were sophomore Hays and junior Dunlavy.
Most of those players know what it’s like to lose to New Palestine, to be eliminated by them and see their season come to an end at the hands of the Dragons.
Ever since the end of the 2017 season, the team has had its sights set on getting further along in the state tournament this year. They want to get past their county rival.
With a 6-0 start to the season, a re-emergence in the district rankings and a lot of senior leadership, the team is building momentum toward its goal as the schedule intensifies.
“We’re very confident at this point,” Dunlavy said. “Our eyes are definitely set on New Pal and beating New Pal, as we lost to them in sectionals last year. Ever since that point, we always said that next year we’re going to have a lot of talent coming up, going to have a good offseason, great practices, great offseason.”
“We want it bad. We want it really bad this year,” McCarty added.