Erik Stangland’s biggest thrills out of coaching tennis at Brownstown Central High School are seeing the girls learn the game and succeeding on the court.

Stangland graduated from Central Noble High School in 1991, and then attended Huntington College, where he graduated in 1996.

He played four years of tennis in high school and one year in college.

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After graduating from college, Stangland taught at Norwell High School for one year before going to Seymour High School and Seymour Middle School beginning in 1998. He now teaches English at Seymour High School.

He coached the Seymour Middle School boys tennis team for three years and was assistant girls coach at Seymour High School under Marty Lewis for one year.

Since 2001, Stangland has led the girls program at Brownstown Central.

He said there’s a big difference between teaching singles and doubles.

“Coaching singles is much easier,” he said. “Doubles is a strategy game, and it’s hard to teach strategy unless people have the advanced skills. When you’re working with people that are intermediate level and they don’t have the strategies yet, that’s when it becomes really difficult, and that’s why doubles is so much harder than singles for the most part.”

When it comes to singles players playing the baseline or charging the net, Stangland has the girls play to their comfort zones.

“The girls will naturally fall into a category because of comfort zones,” he said. “We really try to work to expand the comfort zone, so if they’re a baseline player, we really work so that they become a backboard. They’re constantly hitting shots that, even though they’re not necessarily going for winners and trying to hit the putaway shots all the time, we’re trying to make them more aggressive so they’ll go for winners from the baseline.

“We also do net work because so many of those baseline girls spend so much time at the baseline, and we try to get them to go to the net sometimes simply because it changes the focus of the game for the other team.”

In matches, Stangland said the team that has more consistent, stronger serves typically wins.

“The team that can serve hard has such a huge advantage,” he said. “The teams we play that traditionally have good servers often come out and are ahead, and we have to come back from being two or three games behind because they lose their serve to start and our girls have to battle returns that are like serves, so it’s almost as if they’re playing against themselves.

“So at the high school level, having a good serve makes a major difference,” he said. “If they have a great serve, they’re kind of guaranteeing themselves a win every time they play their serve, so that makes a big difference.”

Stangland encourages his players to get off to a good start.

“We have been struggling to win the first games and have had to come back in every match as a team (through the first five matches). We’ve been down in the first game, and that’s a struggle,” he said.

“Against Henryville, when we split sets at four different locations, it was partially because of our mental letdown in the first games,” he said. “We’re not warmed up, we’re not prepared mentally for that first game, and being down has put us down the first set several times, and it starts with that first game. If you win the first game, it’s a big mental lift.”

In the spring, girls tennis teams battle the elements.

“The biggest thing for us with the wind is if the wind is blowing in your face, you have to hit the ball a little more solid, and you have to continue to use top spin because if you don’t use top spin, the wind will either carry the ball off or it will drive it. Even though it is driving into you, it will drive it down,” Stangland said.

“So we want to have a high, arching groundstroke that the spin pulls the ball down on the end of the court,” he said. “Girls that tend to hit low shots into the wind, the wind will drive it on down put it right in the net, so they have to adjust for that.”

If you have a good, spinning serve with the wind blowing in your face, Stangland said it can be a huge asset because you can have the ball going sideways.

“If you have a hard serve, obviously if you’re with the wind, you can gain several miles per hour on the serve, which is a huge advantage,” he said.

Stangland said the girls have to keep a positive outlook all of the time.

“Hitting the shot in practice, practicing game situations so that winning the shot comes more mechanical than it is mental, is a big help,” he said. “We’ve been stressing that this year. The offseason is when you learn to hit correctly. During the season is when we get to work on strategy. Strategy at the high school level is what wins matches.

“If you don’t have the groundstrokes, the volleys, the form, then the strategy almost becomes impossible, and that makes high school tennis very difficult to win,” he said.

Over the past 18 years, he said the level of play among girls teams has gone up.

Stangland said he has seen a shift in attitudes toward multisport athletes.

“Girls are expected to focus more on individual sports now instead of being a two- or three-sport athlete, and that’s creating better players, but it’s also creating more injuries that are identified with a sport,” he said. “So a girl that plays three sports is less likely to have the same injury over and over, the reoccurring injury that is the same one.

“I’ve seen that as girls focus down more on one sport that the multisport athletes, we’re seeing instead of different injuries all throughout or being injured more all throughout, it’s actually more injuries because you’re in one sport, and it’s the same injury constantly,” he said.

Win or lose, Stangland said it’s all about the kids.

“I enjoy seeing girls improve, seeing girls succeed, watching girls move on,” he said. “I’ve had a few girls that have played a little bit in college, so they were able to see what I was able to see. I’m still waiting for that girl that moves on as a four-year player. I’d like to see that at some point. I’ve got some members on my team that I think in the future will be able to move on and play some college tennis.”

As far as goals, Stangland said he would like to win his first sectional title.

“That is one of the goals I want to achieve,” he said. “I’ve challenged (for a championship) a few times. We’ve surprised and taken out the people that were thought to be the sectional favorites. This (year) is a good group, and I think this is a group that this year and the next couple years can definitely challenge for the sectional title.”