Southmont senior Adam Cox is 21-0 on the season. It’s an incredible feat that Cox wants to continue to add to as he competes in the individual sectional tournament and hopefully beyond. On Wednesday Cox competed against Terre Haute North’s James Belmar and it didn’t look good for the standout Mountie senior in the beginning. Belmar went up 4-1 in the first set and it looked as if Cox was in trouble. However what Cox proceeded to do next was rattle off 11 straight games and was able to cruise to a 6-4, 6-1 win over Belmar to keep his season alive.
A key to those 11 straight match wins was that Cox began to be more patient and wait for his chance to strike.
“That’s the big thing that both of my coaches (head coach Nathan Poynter and assistant coach Chris Cox) were saying is to be patient,” Cox said. “And honestly something else that helped was that my friends and teammates showed up to support me. I play this sport because of them and after the loss in the sectional it was really emotional knowing that I wasn’t going to get to play with them anymore.”
Belmar’s playing style was simply to lay back and be the one not to make the mistake and that strategy in the first five games worked to his advantage. Poynter noted how from this point on Cox may see some different style of players and will have to continue to adjust on the fly.
“He’s going to plenty of different people that play how he’s not used to seeing his typical opponents play,” Poynter said. “Once we got him settled in tonight he was fine. Moving forward he’ll have to continue to adapt mid-game and do it pretty fast. We don’t want to get down 4-1 very often, because as he continues against tougher players, it’ll be that much tougher for him to come back out of that.”
The win for Cox now sees him advance to the individual sectional final back at Crawfordsville on Thursday as he’ll take on Covington’s Evan Norton. Back when the Mounties competed at the Western Boone Invite early in the season, Cox was able to defeat Norton. The two seniors have played more than their fair share of matches against each other over the years and this time one of them will end the other’s season and career.
“It gets real interesting when you play someone as often as I’ve played Evan,” Cox said of his upcoming opponent. “He’s a great person and really fun to play against. We give each other great competition and it’ll be a fun match.”
The match between Norton and Cox will decide who advances to the individual regional next Saturday at Fishers High School. The match is scheduled to get underway at 5 pm back at CHS.
