Mike Graham Quotations

We're still relatively small. But I think that's going to start to change because they're opening a new middle school next year in Geneva so we'll have two middle school programs. (Numbers) have always been an uphill battle for us, and then someone gets hurt and that makes it tough with a hole in the lineup.

We've been hitting our shooting, passing and dribbling since Christmas break and it's coming around. It was an all around good team effort. I knew we matched up well against them and we knew we'd have a chance if we shot the ball.

Nick is 22-2 and he's having a great season. All of those guys are juniors except for Alex Saunders, who's also doing well as a freshman, so that bodes well for the future if they can have that much success as underclassmen.

I don't know what it is, and it may have been the hurricanes, but there is more enthusiasm in this cast than I've ever seen.

(Girard) has pushed him to the point where his serve is much better.

He did a great job in, by far, one of the toughest weight classes here. There were four returning state qualifiers. ... He gave up the first takedown early in each of his matches, which is very unusual, but in all the matches he stayed poised. He's very poised on the mat. It speaks to his experience.

Most of our players are soccer first and tennis second. We have some pretty good athletes, but in order to be real competitive in high-school tennis, it takes more than being a good athlete. In most cases, you've got to take some lessons or work on your game individually. I don't have many of those.

We have a few injuries in our back line. A couple of our projected starters didn't even play, but the players that went in did a great job. I moved junior midfielder Scott Carbon back to the defense and he played very well. I thought he was the player of the game.

This season's schedule came together over the last few weeks, and we hope that our fans are as excited as we are about the events offered for the upcoming season.

We give up a couple of weight classes so we struggle in dual meets. But as individuals, our guys are starting to peak toward the end of the season. I like the position we're right now as far as what we have to get done between now and regional postseason time.

We talked about coming together as a team and putting a full game together. We got it done. It was a good feeling.

(Salazar) played a good game. Like most of the team, he was little too anxious in the first half but settled down in the second. We had a little more flow after the intermission.

It wasn't our best effort, but we're happy with it. We started off and kind of had our way with things. After that we just got a little bit out of our rhythm. We should've had a lot bigger lead much earlier, but we got a little complacent with that.

It really gives you a leg-up when you have country club-type players.

It just makes him hungrier for next week. He just didn't take enough shots. Escamilla was prepared, took more shots and he won.

It's nice to host a meet like this because you're comfortable competing at home. We wanted to place in the top three (and we did that), but this felt like any other weekend for me.

It looked like a first game. We were a little nervous, a little high strung. We calmed down a little for the second half and played better as a team.

The girls went out with a little bit of heart and got the job done.