How Anna Leigh Waters/Will Howells beat Ben Johns/Catherine Parenteau in mixed doubles

Alex Lantz

Director of Content

Last Edited

Jul 30 2025

How Anna Leigh Waters and Will Howells found success at the kitchen line

There was one specific dinking pattern that stood out during this game. Here’s how it worked.

Shot 1: Johns comes over in front of Parenteau to take a dink, and pulls a dink back to the middle of the court.

Shot 2: Howells takes that dink out of the air, sending it back over to Johns’ corner of the kitchen.

Shot 3: Johns is then stretched out and off balance, and forced to hit another dink back to the middle.

Shot 4: Because Johns is now back toward his corner of the kitchen, this opens up the court for Waters or Howells to take the next ball back toward Parenteau, who they are ultimately trying to isolate in this matchup.

The fact that this pattern kept happening throughout the match leads me to believe that it was a specific point of emphasis for the 5s going in. Anna Leigh and her mom, Leigh Waters, who is New Jersey's coach, have obviously seen Johns play a lot of mixed doubles over the years, so maybe it's something they know is effective against him.

It certainly worked in this particular game, as they were able to keep Johns off balance and didn't allow him to control points at the kitchen line like he normally does.

Why this dinking pattern works

This series off dinks accomplishes two things for New Jersey.

1. It makes Johns move -- a lot

He's having to exert a lot of energy to cover this much court and he was often caught out of position since Howells was taking those middle dinks out of the air. Making a player move that much will take its toll over the course of a match -- even against a player who moves as well as Johns.

2. It opens the court

Now that they have brought Johns all the way back over to his sideline, that allows them to take the next ball back toward Parenteau, who they are ultimately trying to isolate in this matchup. Sometimes they would just sent a dink back to Parenteau's corner to try to start a cross-court dinking exchange, and other times they would speed a ball up at Parenteau and start a firefight.

What we can learn from this match

This is a great example of a team coming into a match with a strategy and staying extremely disciplined with that strategy. They recognized what was working and stuck to it. A lot of times amateur players will lose one or two points and throw whatever strategy they had out the window -- don't be that player.

This is also a good pattern to keep in mind the next time you're playing mixed doubles against an aggressive guy. If you want the guy to stay out of the middle or stop taking so much court, dinking to his sideline is a good way to accomplish that. You might not win points right away just by doing that, but it's more of a long-term play designed to wear them out over the course of a match and open up the court for opportunities to attack the women's player.

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