East tennis hopefuls battle it out

BY RON POWELL / Lincoln Journal Star

Cole Mahlberg has been on the other side of the net at the Lincoln East boys tennis team tryouts. Two years ago as a freshman, Mahlberg got cut from the team. He was unable to amass a strong enough record in Coach Jeff Hoham's weeklong round-robin system of mini-challenge sets to be one of the top 30 players.

Instead of sulking, Mahlberg came out swinging — his racket.

"It made me determined to get better," Mahlberg said Monday morning, the first day of practice for fall high school sports. "I knew I wasn't any good as a freshman. I only started playing the game two or three months before tryouts. Basically I started practicing every day after that (getting cut).''

At Hoham's suggestion, Mahlberg got into a fall program at Prairie Life Center after being cut as a freshman. He improved enough to make the Spartans' junior varsity team last season and play at No. 5. He's hoping to compete for a varsity spot this year as a junior.

When he was cut, "Coach Hoham told me that tennis was a lifetime sport and that I'd have more opportunities in the sport," Mahlberg said. "I took him at his word, and he was right."

East is probably the only high school in Nebraska that has to cut tennis players. Most programs scour the school's hallways to increase participant numbers. The Spartans had 44 boys trying out Monday for 30 spots — 10 on varsity, 10 on junior varsity and 10 on reserves.

A few years ago, East had as many as 50 boys go out for tennis. Those kinds of numbers have forced Hoham to use round-robin, three-game mini-sets to decide who stays and who goes. He divides his team into two groups — a top division of returning varsity and top JV players and another with freshmen and potential JV and reserve players.

Hoham has coached for 19 years, and he says cutting a prospective player is the most difficult thing about the job. He encourages those he dismisses to enroll in another fall tennis program in the community or go out for football or cross country at East.

"I can only think of two or three cases in my 19 years where we haven't had someone either go out for another fall sport or get in a tennis program outside the school,'' said Hoham, who guided East to a state-record eight straight Class A state championships from 1988-1995.

"Nothing makes me feel better than to see so many kids who want to play tennis at East. For me, it's not about how many championships you win, it's how many kids you can get interested in playing a lifetime sport."

There was a hint of nervousness among the players Monday morning during their 31⁄2-hour session, the first of two practices scheduled for the day. They either sat quietly on the side of the hill north of the East High courts waiting for the coach to announce their name or they were on one of the seven courts playing, trying to earn their spot.

Even East's projected No. 1 player this fall, sophomore Brandon Videtich, has to go through the challenge matches. Videtich was on the court Monday morning, one day after reaching the 16-and-under singles finals of the Nebraska Junior Closed in Omaha.

"Last year when I was freshman, I was really tense about this (tryouts)," Videtich said. "And there were a few butterflies in my stomach this morning, too. We know how all the freshmen feel, so we try to make them as relaxed and comfortable with it as possible."

Freshman Ross Schulenberg, however, didn't seem to be in awe of his first high school athletic practice.

"I've played with a lot of the older kids at Prairie Life and in lessons at Woods (Tennis Center),'' said Schulenberg, whose goal is to make the junior varsity team. "I've been playing tennis since I was a little kid, so I'm not all that nervous about this."