NAPPANEE — When life hands you lemons, you just have to try to make lemonade. But in the case of NorthWood tennis, what the Panthers have been handed has been more like, well, Lemony Snicket.

First, construction at the NorthWood High School tennis courts fell far behind schedule, leaving the team without home courts this season. Then, the Panthers’ backup venue fell through. And with no choice but to travel each and every night, an injury made it impossible for their coach to drive them.

Nothing has gone right for NorthWood boys tennis in 2017. Northing, that is, except for the Panthers’ play.

“This is kind of the year of the series of unfortunate events because not only (the construction delays), but in June I was playing USTA for myself, I jumped up to hit an overhead and I tore my ACL,” explained head coach Tiffiny Schwartz. “Not only am I dealing with trying to drive the kids everywhere, now I can’t even drive the kids for four weeks, so our bus driver has been very kind.

“It’s just been one thing after another as far as traveling.”

The NorthWood High School courts were originally scheduled to be finished by July 31. When that timetable went awry, Schwartz began scrambling to find her team places to practice. The Panthers spent the first two weeks of the season at Goshen College, where a former player of Schwartz’s — Goshen men’s tennis coach Evan Atkinson — graciously agreed to let NorthWood hold two-a-days and challenge matches prior to the start of the Maple Leaf’s own practice schedule. After that, the plan was for the Panthers to practice at Concord Middle School.

But the Minutemen were suffering through delays on an ambitious overhaul to their own courts, meaning they needed their middle school courts for practice time.

“The issue we had — I hate to talk bad about people but — the fence company, the holes to the fencing are supposed to be 42 inches deep and then filled with 42 inches of concrete. They went anywhere from 10 to 30 inches, so they had to pull every pole, and that’s what set us back another four or five weeks,” explained Concord head coach Todd Denton. “They have a 14-day cure process for the paving. While they’re doing that they were putting in the posts, and — lo and behold — we found a little issue and they had to tear them back out. Which, after they put them back in there was another 14-day cure because we had to put more asphalt in.”

“We had a great two weeks of practicing, doing all of our challenge matches, getting team bonding in and all of that fun stuff. So all of that happens and then we find out Concord somehow screwed up the courts, had to take all the fencing out and redo it,” recalled Schwartz. “So now we don’t have the courts to go to. The week that school started, that’s when we thought we were going to Concord Middle School, but they couldn’t do it because Concord still needed to be there. So at that point we needed to go to NorthWood Middle School and practice on two courts.”

Both the Panthers and the Minutemen have certainly made due.

It’s noteworthy that the two teams who played all but one of their combined 14 Northern Lakes Conference meets on the road this fall have dropped but one of those NLC matches between them and led the league standings headed into the start of the NLC Tournament Wednesday evening. NorthWood owns just one NLC loss and that to the Minutemen, who ran the table in the NLC round robin despite playing all of their conference meets on the road save one — the round robin capper with Northridge last week, when the CHS courts finally became playable.

For defending conference champion Concord, there have at least been six practice courts available. And most of the Minutemen are accustomed to playing on the road anyway, says Denton.

“I’ve got quite a few guys that play tournaments, and they play tennis all year round, so being on a different court is nothing new to a lot of these guys. They travel… so a different court doesn’t bother them at all,” he said.

For NorthWood, which has just two tennis courts available at its middle school, things have been a bit more challenging. The team has little time for live play and instead has to resort to drills for the majority of its practice time. Not only are there late nights on the road each and every meet, but the Panthers’ practices have been stretched a little later into the evening, too.

First, the JV plays for an hour and then the varsity arrives to mingle with them for another hour. After that, the Panthers’ top seven play for an hour before heading home for dinner and home work and the rest of their preparations for the next day.

“I didn’t want to break up the camaraderie. The team camaraderie that we had, we had a lot of good things going on,” Schwartz explained. “We just came off of two great weeks of challenge matches and playing and bonding and all of that, and I didn’t want the guys to just drop all of that right away and not be able to practice together. We did JV for one hour, then we came together for an hour and did everybody, then JV left and varsity was there for an hour. So when we have a practice now we practice for three hours, and it’s always a late night and it’s always driving. The guys that can’t drive, we have to have a mini bus to drive them to the middle school because it’s not right there. So we were constantly battling that.”

It’s been an especially disappointing turn of events for NorthWood’s four seniors — one doubles partners Brant Mast and Jared Hoffman, two doubs player Trevor Klotz and Tyler Hahn — who expected to be playing their final season at a shiny new complex at their high school, not squeezing onto two courts at the junior high for practice and playing away every match. Mast didn’t mince words when describing the situation but said the team was taking it in stride.

“It’s been tough,” he said. “Everybody looks forward to playing on their home court. Traveling every match really sucks, but we’re making the most of it.”

Indeed they have.

So far, the Panthers have reeled off a sterling 10-4 overall record, which includes a 6-1 run through an always-competitive NLC. Wawasee head coach Vince Rhodes went so far as to call this year’s NorthWood lineup the most improved squad he’s ever seen from one year to the next following the two teams’ meet Monday night. And a large part of it has had to do with the Panthers’ attitude.

“You’ve just got to have a positive attitude going into it. You’ve got to know that there are going to be late nights, and you’ve just got to be willing to put up with that. I think you have to stay strong mentally,” said Klotz.

In a way, the long nights and grueling road schedule has actually helped bring the team closer together, say its seniors.

“We encourage each other, and it’s kind of fun,” said Hoffman. “We bond on the bus; we’ve got long bus rides. We go out to eat sometimes after matches, do team bonding like that. That’s always fun.”

No home courts means no senior night for NorthWood’s upperclassmen, too, but the Panthers have taken an interesting approach to that problem.

Instead of having just one night to honor all four of its seniors, the team has spread its senior ceremonies across four meets. One senior was singled out for recognition at one of four meets, and on a given player’s night, the team ate one of his favorite snacks or meals. The Panthers had Taco Bell following Mast’s night at Plymouth, they ate Monster Cookies on Klotz’s night at Bremen, Puppy Chow on Hahn’s night at Fairfield and munched Hacienda chips and salsa on Hoffman’s night at Wawasee Monday.

“It was just kind of the easiest thing to do because we don’t want to intrude on everyone else’s home courts. So it seemed fair for only one of us to go since it wouldn’t take as long,” said Hoffman. “And then we got to focus on that one senior, which is a new experience, and I think it’s been a success.”

“It’s unfortunate for the seniors, but we tried to make it fun for them. We have four seniors. We tried to make it special for them and do a senior night one week at a time so that that way then we don’t have four people that we’re taking up for a whole match,” Schwartz echoed. “And most of those teams that we’ve been against have been very, very kind about letting us just recognize the parents and the child himself.”

While Concord and NorthWood have been without a home this fall, it’s situation that has become commonplace in the NLC recently. Last year it was fellow Northern Lakes school Plymouth which had to endure not one but two homeless seasons as a reconstruction project at the team’s home courts in Centennial Park stretched through both the boys’ and girls’ tennis seasons. Wawasee will begin restructuring its own high school courts in the spring, but with repairs already well underway at the middle school, athletic director Cory Schutz is hopeful it won’t affect the Lady Warriors much if at all.

“The girls may be practicing over (at the middle school) during sectional if we get it scheduled the way we want it to, but by the time the boys start back up in the fall, we should be fully ready to go here,” he said. “That’s what we’re hoping for, and that’s what we’re pushing for. Now, whether or not we can get that is another story. We’ll see how that goes.”

It’s taken a lot of resilience from within for the Panthers to have the kind of season they have in their circumstances, but it’s also taken a lot of support from the outside as well.

Schwartz called out bus driver Gary Miller for the many late nights he’s put in to help the team and the schools that were kind enough to accommodate NorthWood’s senior nights. As always, parents and the surrounding Wa-Nee community have been helpful, but they’ve had to give a little bit more this year, too.

“That’s probably the biggest thing as a coach — this is my 31st season with the girls and guys, and it’s always the same parents that step up and provide food for everybody. We knew this year we weren’t going to be able to have that. Everybody was going to have to step up,” said Schwartz. “Everybody wants to eat so at all of our matches we usually have food or we tell the moms to pack something for them so that they can have something. This year, it really has been quite a community thing. We’ve had a lot of businesses step up, a lot of individuals step up. We had one individual donate us chairs so that we would have chairs to sit at when there weren’t benches and bleachers. We’ve had a lot of people that offered to give us food so the parents didn’t have to provide food every match.

“We really have been very blessed in that aspect of things, and I can’t thank the community enough.”

“I really think the community has reached out to us. We’ve had several businesses and individuals who have donated very generously, and it’s made this year fun,” Hoffman said. “It’s a lot different than having home courts, but it is fun, especially when the community is rallying around you.”