ROCKINGHAM – At this point in his career, most people around Richmond County know Patrick Hope as the Richmond Senior High School Raiders’ junior varsity football coach – and he still is. However, starting February 14, he became the Raiders boy’s tennis coach for the first time.
Hope served as the bus driver for the team last year for a lot of the team’s away matches, and he said a part of why he decided to fill the vacancy was because he already knew most of the players from either other sports or from middle school. So, when the opportunity came up to coach tennis, he was open to it and said he was interested.
His JV Raider squad wrapped up a perfect season this past fall, but he’s not looking to run the table on the tennis court. However, he did witness a lot of close matches last year that he thinks the team will be able to improve upon.
Armed with a fairly balanced team of 17 total players – nine upperclassmen and eight lowerclassmen – he’s spent the offseason getting to know his new team.
“The first three days were our tryout days,” said Hope. “We’ve just been familiarizing our guys with tennis, even returning players, with the rules. A lot of the time has been spent on the basics, just how to play the game and set up the scoring. We mixed it up with singles and doubles play. They’ve played a lot just to familiarize themselves with the game.”
And while Hope doesn’t have any official tennis playing experience, he feels that his experience being around his athletes will give him a pretty good advantage, as will the “good mix of players” on this year’s team.
The Raiders went 7-7 overall last season, and racked up a 4-6 record in the (then) Southeastern Conference. The only players the Raiders have lost to graduation are No. 1 singles player Josh McGee and No. 5 singles player Parshil Thakar.
From watching the team last season, Hope could tell it was a really competitive conference with Pinecrest High School usually being the team to beat. With Jack Britt High School joining the Sandhills Athletic Conference this year, and traditionally doing well in tennis to go along with the Patriots, Lumberton and Scotland high schools, Hope expects every matchup to be competitive.
“I have to figure out the right combinations (of singles and doubles players). We can be a better team towards the end of April than we are at the beginning and make some noise in the conference tournament,” said Hope. “I feel like we have some pretty solid singles players. We’ve got some guys who played last year.”
Included in those guys are sophomore twins Miles and Austin Harrington who played as freshmen last season. Austin (2-1) was the No. 2 singles player, while Miles (3-3) was the No. 4 seed, and together they made up the No. 1 doubles team at times throughout the year.
This pair of tennis players is one Hope has a lot of confidence in with their aggressive style of play. Also mentioned by Hope was Mason Bailey, a younger player who is picking up the game and Bradford Pittman, who he said is also starting to “show up.”
Also returning is senior Kris Spivey (3-2), who in 2017, was the No. 6 singles and No. 3 doubles player. And senior Jimmy Cooley joins the team this season, so combined with the Harrington twins, Hope anticipates them to be his top four singles and doubles players.
“It’s just a matter of figuring out who will represent us best and can help us win throughout these matches,” Hope added.
He’ll have to finalize his lineup rather quickly as the Raiders are set to open the season on Tuesday at home against Purnell Swett at 4 p.m. Then Richmond will hit the road to Union Pines (Moore County) on Wednesday, and finally finish the three-match week against Pinecrest at home on Thursday.
“This first week, we’ll find out how good we are really quickly,” concluded Hope.
