Q&A with Franklin Academy tennis coach Gregory Duffy

Franklin Academy High School men’s tennis head coach Gregory Duffy speaks with the Wake Weekly about the Patriots’ recent conference and state championship wins.

Wake Weekly sports editor Joey Ellsworth: Tell me about how the season went and about winning the championships.

Duffy: Well, we had a season of 18 matches and it went about as well as a season can possibly go. We only lost one match the whole season. We played Sanderson, we played Heritage and we beat them convincingly. We were supposed to play Wake Forest too but it got rained out. But I’m pretty sure we would have won that one too.

Our conference is the strongest tennis conference in the entire state for 2A – But we went undefeated during the conference. We had some tight ones and our toughest matches the whole season were against Raleigh Charter and Research Triangle which are two of our conference opponents. The boys played great. They’re all extremely great players. I think a couple of them are headed for Division I college tennis. They are closer to watching a pro on TV than whatever you can conceive a high school tennis player looks like. Our No. 6 player, frankly our No. 7 player could be a number one on other high school teams.

WW: What was the mindset after the one loss and how did you bounce back from that?

Duffy: We lost because some stomach bug went through this school. On that day, we were supposed to play Durham School of the Arts, they’re a good 3A school. Four of my top six guys were sick so when we had two. We still almost won, it was five to four if we would have won a tie-breaker or two we would have won that match too. It was frustrating we didn’t get the undefeated season. It was our last match of the season too.

WW: Can you describe the journey from the start of the season to state champions?

Cooper: Well, we already knew we had a good team. We were the conference champions last year, although, it was tighter and and we had a loss or two. But we were the very narrow conference champions in our conference last year. And then this year, we added three new players to our top six. We had Derek [Shute] at No. 2, who went undefeated through the entire season in singles and doubles, including all the regional and state tournaments. Then we have another guy, a freshman Akil [Vinodh] at five and then we have another freshman Hudson [Collins] at six.

So we may have graduated a couple of last year’s team, but we replaced them with even better people this time. We had high expectations. Our goal the whole long was to get the banner and when we got it wasn’t close either. We destroyed that other team in the finals. The boys are like ruthless tennis assassins, and they carried it out coolly and calmly.

WW: Can you talk about more about that when and what it meant for this team to win especially being the first for the school?

Duffy: Well we went there and I didn’t feel the boys had any nerves. We lost the three-match in a 13-11 tiebreaker. It all came down to Alfonso [Sison], who is the 2A state singles champion two years in a row, but he’s playing another kid who played at the state championships. It came down to a 10-point tiebreaker so he had the weight of the whole team on his shoulders. Now if he lost, we would have had to play doubles and I still think we would have won, we got the state doubles champions on our team. But it takes a big weight off our minds knowing that you don’t have to play doubles because you never know what happens. He had everybody watching.

WW: Can you talk about Alfonso’s impact on the team winning the MVP for that game and him being the back-to-back champion?

Duffy: He’s a quiet, reserved kind of guy, very humble and doesn’t talk much. He just lets his game do his talking. All the other kids look up to him. He works incredibly hard. Multiple hours per day, every day he’s working on his tennis game and has been since he was probably five or six. He works harder at his job than most people who have real jobs and are getting paid. He doesn’t like to lose. He has not lost a singles match in about a year and a half. Him and Derek are extremely experienced. Almost little coaching is needed.

WW: Can you talk about Derek and Nick?

Duffy: Derek is a new player to us. He’s a sophomore. He’s big, he hits really hard, he is harder than Alfonso does and his serve is like a cannon. He didn’t lose all season. I put Derrick in doubles with Nick who’s our No. 3 player and the two of them seem to find a connection. Nick would play better when he was with Derek than he would by himself. They won easily, destroying people and demoralizing them. And these other teams are good too, but those two, they really took it to another level and they did great.

Tanner Collins, he’s the senior. He is like Mr. Steady. He uses his strategy what I call the ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ he just keeps the ball going, not trying to do too much and gives his opponent opportunities to make mistakes.

The other two guys are freshmen, Akil and Hudson, both have fabulous winning records, both excellent strikers of the ball and good players. Like I said our No. 6s and fives are better than most people’s No. 1 and it just all came together that way.

WW: What were some key moments over the course of the season that defined your success?

Duffy: We played Sanderson the last two years, and they beat us even though I thought we played well. But we went there and it was our first match of the season and we didn’t really know exactly what we’d had and when we went and played them and beat them 7-2. I felt like ‘Yeah, there’s gonna be a banner hanging on the wall at the end of this season.’ And then when we played Raleigh Charter, we beat them twice during the regular season. One of them came down to a doubles match and we pulled that out. That was probably our happiest one.

WW How did you go about building a winning culture and a culture of excellence?

Duffy: We’ve been having winning records and teams in the playoffs and all of that for years, the girls and the boys. We know what it takes to win. I think we’ve always had a winning attitude. Sometimes we didn’t have the game to match it, but we certainly did. And we try. We never give up. That’s always been our attitude.

WW: What are your goals for next year?

Duffy: Well, if I have Derek and Alfonso, I got everybody back except Tanner. And my No. 7 guy, Bryce [Novitsky], who was No. 6 until Hudson came along, he can move right back in. If I got everybody back, I don’t see any reason why we can’t do it again. I’ve got other schools like Millbrook and Ravenscroft, and other big hitters calling me wanting to play us next year too. So our schedule may be even tougher than it was this time. But, assuming I have everybody back, and they say they’re coming back, we should be right back at it next year.

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