Weekend preview: Dover Motor Speedway
The Calhoun High School boys tennis team saw its resurgent season come to end Tuesday with a loss to Greater Atlanta Christian School (GACS) in the Sweet 16 in Atlanta.
While the boys weren’t able to go as far as they hoped in the postseason, it still was a fun time for head coach Tess Wright’s players, who moved back into prominence this year after winning the Region 7-5A regular season championship for the first time in four years with a perfect 5-0 record and then reaching the Region tournament finals for the first time as well for the first time in four years before they lost to Dalton.
And all of that culminated Tuesday in Atlanta with their first trip to the Sweet 16 since 2019.
The team was led by three seniors — twins Will Meadows and Patrick Meadows and Devin Starkey with the Meadows’ brothers holding down two of the three singles positions.
Will Meadows was the team’s number one singles player with freshman Kurt Wallin the number two man and Patrick Meadows at three.
Starkey was half of the number one doubles team with junior Christopher Arnold his partner.
Calhoun’s other doubles team was a young one with freshman Cohen Shelton and sophomore EJ Gallman that duo.
Wright said the team has some talented young players in the pipeline with two freshmen in the starting lineup, but actually eight on the team overall and she believes they will definitely be competing for varsity spots as soon as next year.
“The future is very bright for the boys,” she said.
Wright also said her trio of upperclassmen worked hard everyday to elevate the team back to their current status and their impact will be felt for a long time.
Will Meadows will be attending Berry College and is looking to major in film and media production, which has become huge business in Georgia.
Meadows said he will miss the team environment the most and would like to thank his family, his coaches, and God for helping him through his tennis career.
Patrick Meadows will be also be attending Berry College and he will be majoring in either graphic design or environmental science.
Patrick would like to thank his parents for their constant support.
“I wouldn’t be where I am without them,” he said. “Second, I would like to thank my coaches: Coach Wright, Profit, Collins, Davis and Coach Brent.
I would like to thank my teammates. Everyone has always been there to motivate and push me and I hope that I have been able to do the same. Frankly, I would like to thank God for giving me the opportunity to play on this amazing team.”
Starkey will be attending Kennesaw State and he will major in mechanical engineering with a minor in aerospace. He said that honestly, he’ll just miss being part of the Calhoun tennis program.
“The thing I will miss the most are my teammates and the time I get to spend with them,” he said.
The team finished the season with a solid 15-7 record this winter/spring, including their 5-0 mark in 7-5A.
Calhoun began the playoffs last week at home with a 5-0 win over Loganville in the first round to send them to this past week’s second.
The Greater Atlanta Christian School will now face Decatur in the Elite 8 after Decatur beat Greenbrier in the Sweet 16 on Tuesday.
The NASCAR Cup Series will feature a markedly different style of door-to-door competition this week as it moves to Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Wurth 400 (2 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The one-mile concrete Dover track’s brand of tight racing is quite different from the 2.6-mile Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, where the series raced last weekend.
Kyle Busch — a three-time Dover winner — shows up as one of only three drivers to have doubled their 2023 trophy total (two wins) this season. He bested the field on the Talladega high banks last Sunday in one of the most action-packed races of the season, featuring 57 lead changes.
Busch is one of eight active drivers to have won at Dover’s “Monster Mile” previously. His three wins there tie him with Kevin Harvick and Dover’s “hometown favorite” Martin Truex Jr. as most among active drivers.
Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski and Alex Bowman have also won at the track.
In fact, there have been nine different winners in the past 10 Dover races; defending race winner Elliott is the only repeat winner in that time (2018, 2022). The season mirrors that competitive diversity, too. Through the opening 10 races, there have been seven different winners from six different race organizations.
This will be the third week back behind the wheel for Elliott after he missed six weeks of competition with a broken leg (snowboarding accident). The 2020 series champion is currently ranked 31st in the standings and needs to score a win to secure his playoff eligibility for this year.
Dover is certainly a good opportunity for Elliott, who earned his first win of the 2022 season there and would love to do the same on Sunday. He has an amazing nine top-five finishes in 12 starts at the track.
Elliott’s average finish (9.750) is second only to his Hendrick teammate Kyle Larson’s 6.929 average at the Monster Mile. Larson won the 2019 Dover race and he and Elliott are the only two competitors with average finishes better than 10th.
Of note, their Hendrick Motorsports’ teammate Bowman will not be competing this weekend. He was injured driving in a sprint car race this week and is expected to miss at least three weeks.
Xfinity Series regular — and defending Xfinity Dover race winner — Josh Berry will pull double-duty — again — and drive Bowman’s No. 48 Chevrolet in his absence. Berry just filled in for Elliott during the former series champ’s own medical situation.
Two of those boasting outstanding Dover resumes are also two of the most motivated this weekend.
Harvick, who will be retiring at the end of the season, is hoping to snap a 22-race winless streak in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford and has been fast, with top10 finishes in half the 10 races to date. His last win at Dover was in the spring of 2018. His 1,666 laps led total at Dover is the most among active drivers and he’s finished top-10 in 23 of his 42 previous starts at The Monster Mile.
“Dover is one of those racetracks where if we don’t win, we feel like we’ve let everybody down,” Harvick said. “It’s been a great racetrack for us and we’ve had some really dumb luck there with lug nuts and valve stems, but outside of those few races, it’s been a very successful racetrack for us. Dover is just one of those grind-itout-type of races.”
Truex is hoping some “hometown” magic may help him. The New Jersey-native and 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion considers Dover his home track and fittingly, he earned his first career series victory there in 2007.
His last Dover win in his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota came in 2019 when he led more than 100 laps — something he’s done five times at Dover in his career. Truex won the non-points paying Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum to open the 2023 season and scored his first top-five (third place) at Martinsville two weeks ago. His last points-paying victory came at Richmond, Va. on Sept. 11, 2021.
Practice for the Wurth 400 is Saturday at 10:30 a.m. on FS2 with Busch Light Pole Qualifying at 11 a.m. on FS1. The last pole-winner to hoist a Dover trophy was the track’s all-time winningest competitor, Jimmie Johnson in 2010.
The Xfinity Series heads to Dover Motor Speedway for Saturday’s A-GAME 200 (1:30 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) with a tightly bunched group of drivers atop the standings.