NORTH MANCHESTER - It all started with a team meeting with the coach.
Going into Manchester's Aug. 24 tennis match with Fort Wayne Carroll, members of the Squires' team came to coach Eric Christiansen. The conversation? Changing the line-ups."We had just lost to (Fort Wayne) Bishop Dwenger, and the guys came to me before we played Fort Wayne Carroll, a team we had not beaten in 15 years," Christiansen said of that team sitdown.
In that meeting, the Squires' lineup was mixed up. Among the moves was switching Bryant Wiley from No. 1 or 2 singles to No. 1 doubles, along with David Cable.
The move seems to have worked, as Manchester defeated Carroll that day and Cable and Wiley are set to compete in the individual doubles regional Saturday at Ben Davis High School.
"It pretty much just flowed," Wiley said of teaming up with Cable on the doubles court.
In their first match together, Cable and Wiley defeated their Carroll counterparts 6-1, 6-0. And things haven't gotten too much tougher for the pair, who advanced in the individual portion of the state tournament with a 6-2, 6-0 victory over Jonathan Flatt and Robbie Stewart of Logansport in the Peru Sectional Championship Saturday.
"That was the best they've played," Christiansen said of the sectional championship. "They worked on the things we worked on in practice, and it showed."
Both players have been four-year varsity performers at Manchester, but even now, Christiansen is pleased with how well the two still take direction.
"They are very coachable," he said. "To still look at me and not say, 'We're good enough,' shows what kind of guys they are."
And through direction, the two have discovered what it takes to win.
"Their strengths really compliment each other's weaknesses," Christiansen said. "We've had more than one match where one carries the other."
"He has good ground strokes, and I'm more effective at the net," Cable said. "Because of my wingspan, I can be more aggressive at the net, and I know he can get to a ball hit past me."
Coming into the season, Cable had spent his entire prep career as a doubles player, while Wiley had always been a singles player. Though they had never played together as a doubles team going into the Carroll match, things clicked.
"I had played a ton of doubles matches in the summer with my dad, as well as in the Manchester Tennis League," Wiley said of making the transition.
Wiley explained that the points are a bit quicker in doubles play, but the two seem to have gotten the hang of it.
To this point, Cable and Wiley carry a 21-1 record into the regional matchup against Crawfordsville's Joshua Rager and Jonathan Streetman, who have an 11-6 record. Along with qualifying doubles teams from squads still competing in the state team tournament, Cable and Wiley are among 20 tandems vying for a doubles championship in the individual postseason tournament.
"To this point, all of them are good teams," Christiansen said. "You must have a pretty solid team to get to this point."
And it hasn't been a fluke that Cable and Wiley are among the top teams.
Since fifth grade, the entire Manchester team has been playing tennis, taking part in the Manchester Tennis League. With that type of experience, the Squires reached the regional championship match last year, where they lost 4-1 to Kokomo. The success last year had the Squires hoping for even more this season, which spawned the new lineup, which put Cable and Wiley together.
"We didn't make the move to advance individuals," Christiansen said. "We really wanted to get to semistate as a team. Not just one person on the team."
As it was, the team stumbled at the Peru Sectional, losing 3-2 to Peru.
"I felt the whole team had a horrible sectional," Christiansen said.
Cable and Wiley did make it out of the sectional with an undefeated record, advancing on. But just because they're no longer participating on the court, that doesn't mean the rest of the team isn't still cheering on their teammates.
"We all love tennis," Cable said of his teammates still participating in practices and traveling with the two.
"Saturday, at the sectional finals, all the team members that could be there, were there," Christiansen said. "It's a group of friends, not just a tennis team."
And with teammates cheering them on, Cable and Wiley hope to send them home happy, therefore advancing to the following week's state championships.
"If we play like we did in our last match," said Wiley, when asked about the duo's possibility of advancing to state.
