The Tribune-Democrat
ALTOONA —
Practice made perfect for the Greater Johnstown High School doubles combination of Ben Mayer and Nelson Gosnell.
The seniors, who rarely get to play an actual doubles match, made the most of their opportunity this weekend, beating Lewistown’s Lauren Valdivia and David Boozel 6-3, 6-7 (2), 6-4 in the District 6 Class AA championship on Saturday.
“It was a very close match, two hours and 20 minutes,” Johnstown coach Joe Ramirez said. “Normally, they take a break between the second and third sets, but both teams just wanted to keep playing.”
The match was moved indoors because of the windy conditions outside, and Mayer and Gosnell got off to a strong start on the carpet. But Valdivia and Boozel rallied to win the second set, then took a 2-0 lead in the third set.
Mayer said that the Johnstown team got “a little discouraged, but we just came back and kept fighting, and it ended up working well.”
Gosnell said that as the pressure mounted, he and Mayer kept encouraging one another.
“We were nervous, but we just kept pumping each other up, telling each other ‘We can do this!’ ” he said. “We went game by game and point by point, telling each other we could do it.”
They did, eventually tying the third set at 4. Then, they were able to break Valdivia’s serve, something the Johnstown duo struggled to do for most of the match.
“It was really big,” Mayer said of the turning point. “We broke her in the first set, which helped win it. We said ‘We’ve got to break this serve right now,’ and we did, and it all came together.”
Mayer then held serve to give the Trojans the district championship and a trip to Hershey for the state championship tournament May 28-29.
“It was pretty amazing,” Mayer said of the victory. “It’s hard to say we didn’t expect to be there, because we thought we could do well, but we weren’t sure how well.”
Mayer and Gosnell entered the tournament as the third seed while Valdivia and Boozel were the fourth seeds. A pair of upsets pitted them against one another in the finals.
“They were confident throughout,” Ramirez said. “That’s part of what I tried to teach them as they prepared for this. If you’re going through a tournament, it’s four matches. You can’t get too high or too low. If you make a mistake you have to come back and win the next point.
“You hope that they can withstand the pressures of the match. They did that all through the tournament.”
Mayer and Gosnell had a little more pressure heaped on them in the final, as Johnstown’s prom was Saturday night. After winning the championship, they had to hurry home to get ready for their big night.
But busy schedules are nothing new for the duo. Because teams in the Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference play three singles and two doubles matches in dual meets, Mayer and Gosnell concentrated on singles play during the year. But they often asked Ramirez to stay late after practice to work on their doubles game.
“This has always been a goal of theirs,” Ramirez said. “They’ve always worked hard at it. They’d always ask me, ‘Coach can we practice some more? Can we work extra time?’ ”
Ramirez said that he tried to prepare them for anything they might face in a match.
“In practice, we try to set up every scenario that they could possibly face,” he said. “That helped them when those pressure situations come into play. They knew they could execute those shots.”
Even so, Ramirez knew playing in the district finals would be different for them.
“You can practice playing doubles with your teammates or with your coach, but it’s not the same as it is in an actual match, when there is the pressure of making and executing shots,” he said. “But if you have good fundamentals down of serve, return and good net play (it can work). That’s sort of how these boys won out.”
For Mayer, teamwork was never a concern.
“It was pretty easy because Nelson is such a good partner,” he said. “We work really well together.”
Gosnell agreed.
“We’ve always been friends, so the chemistry has always been there,” he said. “We’ve always played well together, even if we don’t play together that often.”
