With the constant thuds of rackets to tennis balls and an intense summer heat beating down on the red court, Levelland tennis two-a-days were officially underway.
With their first match in less than two weeks, head coach Jeffrey Braziel has the varsity Levelland tennis team practicing harder than ever.
“The kids for varsity have the two-hour morning session and then every other day they’ll have a two-hour afternoon session,” Braziel said. “We rotate varsity boys and girls because you can only get so many hours. That keeps us from breaking those UIL rules.”
In those two-a-day practices, Braziel has his athletes doing a rotation of drills where each one emphasizes a different skill to work on.
The drills are not only fast paced but intentionally planned by Coach Braziel.
“We’re focusing on the serve and the return, making sure we’re resetting once we’ve had a serve. That was a big issue we had last year, not really getting reset to hit the next ball after we served,” Braziel said. “We’re trying to work on making sure that we’re getting reset there, so that we can actually play the next play and get the points that way.” Braziel gave an example of one of his drills where they use the ball machine and his athlete aims to return the ball back to a specific target.
Leading with a mindset of daily improvement, he helps his athletes work on their weaknesses and refine their game.
“We try to get a little better every day, even if it’s only 1%,” Braziel said. “We don’t expect perfection. Everyone has flaws, even the best tennis players in the world mess up. We expect progress.”
Even the slightest progression by his athletes could go a long way as his roster is full of proven seniors and promising talent.
The boy’s team is senior heavy with multiple four-year starters, who have district and regional success. While the girl’s team is slightly younger with a few newcomers, but a lot of returning varsity experience.
When addressing the leaders for each team, Braziel listed Nathan Ellis and William Canon for the boy’s side, while for the girl’s he listed Daisy Perez, Maddie Almager and Teagan Brothers.
With the fall tennis season being co-ed, the strong mix of leadership and experience hint at the potential of immense success for the Levelland tennis program.
And with his talented team, coach Braziel has one goal in mind.
“We want to make the playoffs. We missed a year last season, and we want to get back to it,” Braziel said. “In the six years I’ve been here, we’ve made the playoffs four times and only missed it twice.” Maintaining a level of playoff success in his coaching tenure is important to him, but his motivation goes far beyond any selfish ambition.
“We want to make it a really good year for our seniors. We want to send them out with pride,” Braziel said. “They’ve put a lot into the program and lots of time in. We want to pay them back by giving them a playoff run and finishing the fall out strong and making some runs into the spring tournament as well.”
On August 2, Levelland takes their first step towards their goal of playoff success as they open their season at home against Big Spring at 10:00am.
“That’s a big rivalry match for us. Me and the coaches are good friends. The kids are good friends,” Braziel said. “They got some young players that will be really good and a great staff, so it’ll be a good test to start the year. They’re also in our spring district, so it kind of gives us an idea of what we’re looking at in the spring for us as well.”
Come out and support the tennis program as they start their season with a high stake’s matchup.