Week in Review: Clawson Boys Tennis, Cross Country Team Rebuilding

The Clawson varsity boys tennis team graduated eight seniors from a squad that won the Macomb Conference Silver division last year.

Rebuilding for the Trojans team is going slowly this season, but head coach Warren Block said it's not because his kids aren’t improving. Clawson just hasn't had any games to play.

This year’s team opened the season on Aug. 24 with a 5-1 loss to Royal Oak and didn’t have a game for nearly three full weeks. Schools without enough players to field tennis teams this season left Clawson’s schedule thin to begin with and some cancellations have made it worse. 

Last week, the Trojans were supposed to play three games, but Mt. Clemens didn’t show up at Clawson City Park on Wednesday for the schools scheduled meet.

“They didn’t show up and didn’t give any explanation for not showing up, so it’s going to go down as a win,” Block said. “Hopefully we’ll play them sometime. They are in our league tournament next week.”

Clawson lost the two games it did end up playing. The team lost to Lamphere on Sept. 12 5-1 and to Sterling Heights on Thursday 5-1. Josh McMillan was the lone winner for the Trojans against the Lamphere Rams. He won his No. 4 singles match. Against the Sterling Heights Stallions, Daniel Carpenter and Allen Skowron won in No. 1 doubles.

Block said the team is practicing hard and keeping focused even though they haven’t had too many games. 

“They are mostly beginners so they are taking the opportunity to learn how to play, so spirits are pretty good,” Block said. “The improvement from the Lamphere match to the Sterling Heights was incredible, I felt if we had played Mt. Clemens we would have won that match.”

Cross country rebuilds

Another Clawson team rebuilding this year is the cross country varsity boys team.

“Everybody except one person on the team, this is their first year running cross country,” head coach James Kiefer said. “And so our goal for this year is to see a steady improvement from meet to meet. For the most part we’ve seen that.” 

So far his team has met that goal. In three meets this season almost all of his runners have improved their times at each event.  

Last Wednesday, the Trojans competed at the MAC Gold Jamboree at Metro Beach.

“We didn’t have a full squad unfortunately,” Kiefer said. “Three seniors couldn’t make it because they had other things scheduled. It was initially supposed to be on Tuesday, but it was moved to Wednesday and that screwed things up.”

Clawson’s top runner Ryan Bailey, and only returning senior on the team, missed the meet along with two other runners. The Trojans ended up finishing in fifth place out of six teams because they only had four runners competing. Kiefer was happy with the times they put up.

“They are improving minutes, not just seconds,” Kiefer said. ”That’s a big deal for a 5K to go down from 24 minutes down to 23 minutes.”

Junior Jacob Smith and freshman Anthony Pizzo ran well at the jamboree. Smith ran the five miles in 21:45 and Pizzo ran a 20:58. Smith has improved his time by over five minutes from the team’s initial scrimmage and Pizzo has shaved off three minutes from his time.

On Saturday, all Kiefer’s runners were able to compete at the Almont Invitational.

Clawson finished in 12th out of 14 teams, but again everyone improved their times. Bailey had the best time for the Trojans with a 18:50 at Almont.

The big story on Saturday was the Clawson Middle School competitors.

Keifer said it was the first official meet of the season for the sixth, seventh and eighth graders. The Trojans have two seventh graders and a sixth grader on the team. Katlyn Pizzo, a seventh grader, finished in second place for all middle schoolers at the event. 

“She’s a top notch runner, no question,” Kiefer said.

Right now only one girl runs on the cross country team at the high school level so the scores don’t count. Kiefer is trying to get more girls on the team. While Pizzo is two years away, she is definitely a potential bright star in the making.

Other Results

• Boys soccer: The Trojans varsity boys soccer team won their game on Monday 4-2 over Warren Woods Tower. 
• Football: Clawson lost to Marine City 48-21 on Friday night in varisty football. It was the Trojans' first loss of the season. For a full recap of the game