Wes Toyer hits a shot during 1 singles play last year. The now-NorthWood junior is back at the position for a second straight season. (File photos by James Costello)

NAPPANEE — Making the jump to 1 singles as a sophomore can be a pretty daunting transition. The level of play at the top spot is always challenging, and the quality of the Northern Lakes Conference field in particular can make for an especially difficult move.

Still, then-NorthWood sophomore Wes Troyer was definitely up for the challenge last year, finishing his sophomore season a notch above .500 with an 11-10 overall mark and a fourth-place finish at the NLC tournament. With a year under his belt, the Panthers junior is ready for another go at No. 1.

Troyer enters the 2018 season having made big strides in his game over the offseason, as he and Panthers No. 2 sophomore Ben Vincent — who makes the jump from the top spot in NorthWood’s JV lineup this year — pushed each other’s games to new levels over the summer. Their coach has already seen that preseason work pay dividends on the court.

“Me and Ben would play pretty much every day. We’d come out and hit with each other for awhile, just work on pretty much every aspect that we needed to. Sometimes we would feed balls to each other and do drills with each other, and sometimes we would just play out points,” explained Troyer of his preparation for the fall season.

“I am really excited with the way Wes is playing right now. I can’t really say that without saying how Ben and he have gone out throughout the summer and played a lot in the offseason,” said NorthWood coach Tiffiny Schwartz. “Both of them are pushing each other very well. It helps both of them because they’re both getting better. They’re both playing well, and we could have someone that would be potentially in a high spot.

“With Wes being there already for a year, he’s got a year under his belt. He’s improved a lot from just what he’s done in the offseason, and I feel really good and comfortable with him being in the number one position.”

A nagging back injury at the tail end of last season hindered Troyer’s game somewhat, but the junior says he’s pretty much back at 100 percent and has been for some time. Now healthy, the southpaw has been able to get some velocity back on his first serves.

“Towards the end of last year, I went up for a serve, and my back just felt pain after that,” Troyer recalled. “So pretty much every time I would serve, if I would actually go all out on a serve, I would feel pain so I could pretty much only stand there and serve. I got over it three weeks after the season probably, and it’s felt fine ever since.”

“Right toward maybe the last half of the season, he had started to come up with a back injury. We really weren’t sure what it was, but it was toward the end of the season so he did struggle a little bit with that. I wouldn’t say there was a big hindrance or anything, but we definitely saw some things with his back. In fact, one of the matches we held him out of so that he could be rested for sectional,” said Schwartz.

“Serving is where it bothered him the most. He could hit ground strokes, and he was OK with most of that. Obviously running probably had a little bit of an effect on it as well, but mostly the serves were the hardest for him. I could tell a big difference in his service game; he wasn’t serving near the potential that he was in the beginning of the year.”

Ben Vincent plays a point at 2 singles last fall. Vincent will be full time at the position this year after splitting time between NorthWood’s JV and varsity lineups last season.

Troyer and Vincent will give their team two quality presences at the top two singles spots, but NorthWood should be solid throughout its lineup.

Junior Landon Holland returns to fill out the No. 3 singles slot after recording a 9-8 mark last season, mainly playing at the No. 2 spot. The Panthers’ biggest question marks are in their doubles pairings after losing three of four players to graduation there last year, including 2 doubles player  Trevor Klotz and 1 doubles partners Brant Mast and Jared Hoffman, who advanced all the way to the state finals of the IHSAA’s doubles tournament, where they fell in the quarterfinals to Hamilton Southeastern’s Mark Slaninka and Andrew Myers.

Trajan Schwartz is the team’s lone holdover from last year’s doubles lineups, and he moves up from 2 to 1 doubles after he and Klotz combined for a 19-3 record and an NLC title last fall. He’ll partner this year with Jack Wysong, a junior who went 12-10 at the 3 singles spot last year.  Although Wysong played singles last season, he does have some previous doubles experience, which should help.

“I think the big thing is obviously we lose three people last year that were in those key doubles positions. Those seniors left some pretty big shoes for us to fill,” said Tiffiny Schwartz. “I do feel like part of a bonus is, at 1 doubles, Trajan played with Trevor last year, and Jack’s freshman year two years ago, Jack played at doubles with Trevor and then ended up moving into the singles lineup. Both of them have some of the experience of playing doubles. They’ve played a lot in the offseason together so I think it’s really just going to be a matter of getting the match experience going for them and really being able to talk and communicate well together.”

NorthWood’s 2 doubles lineup is still a work in progress, but at least for now Grant Topping and Chase Horner will likely partner up there after playing together in the JV Panthers’ top doubles spot last season. Dawson Bley is also in the mix at the position, and Holland may move around between 3 singles and 2 doubles as the season progresses. With NorthWood’s new tennis courts scheduled to be fully completed later this month following a 2017 season that saw the Panthers without a home, Schwartz has the luxury of moving her lineup around a little more.

“We weren’t really able to do a lot of challenge matches with the way our schedule is to maybe even kind of move people around and do some things,” she explained. “Obviously it worked out fine last year because we were successful, but this year it is so helpful to know that we can go to NorthWood and we have 10 courts that are at our beck and call. We can do whatever we need to. If we need to spread out, we can spread out. If we only need a couple courts, then we can be on a couple courts. I just think they look really nice. They play nice. It’s going to be really good once everything is out there and completed.

“Once it’s completed and done, we really are going to be spoiled.”

The Panthers will have the benefit of hosting Sectional 24 on those shiny new courts, and they’re excited about the opportunity. Along with another top finish in the NLC — where the team placed runner-up behind Concord last season — NorthWood tennis is hoping to capture the program’s first sectional title since winning back-to-back championships in 2006-07.

“I feel good going into the season. I think all five positions on varsity can do very well this year,” said Troyer. “I would say our goal, I think realistically we want to get through the regional, but we feel like we should win the sectional so we definitely want to get that.”

“Our practices are great. We’re challenging everybody. Everyone is stepping up, and we want to see what kind of success we can have,” said Schwartz. “We were second in the conference last year, and they want to be able to do the same if not better. We didn’t win a sectional; this group has not been able to be on a team that’s won a sectional so their goals are even going into that. Let’s see where we can be in a sectional. Are we going to be able to show our stuff and work hard enough that we are able to win a sectional? It’s been awhile, so I think they’re ready to get back to that again.”