The Martlet

Victoria’s Cedar Hill and Oak Bay Rec Centres were treated to varsity-calibre tennis this past weekend, as UVic’s tennis team hosted their annual tennis tournament.

Eight teams from surrounding northwestern universities made the trip to the Island to participate in the World Team Tennis format tournament. Matches were determined by one set, first to six with a tiebreak at five-all.

Each team consisted of six teammates with designated players playing in men’s singles and doubles as well as women’s singles and doubles, which were then followed by a mixed doubles match. The leader in wins of sets and overall game score moved onto the next round.

UVic was divided into two teams with Team A playing at Cedar Hill Rec Centre and eventually taking home first place in the tournament, while Team B played most of their matches at Oak Bay Rec Centre.

Team A consisted of Grant Hatley, Rob Fuhrman, Ian Harvey, Morgan Klieber, Stephanie Chan and Ana Curcin, while Team B was comprised of Stefanie Grieser, Manuela Arnold, Lucy Fairbotham, Mica Koll, Jamie Tanner and Eric Aitken.

“Both teams performed really well,” said UVic’s Harvey after the tournament. “We spread [the teams] out so that we had good players on each team and it was really well balanced so it worked out well.”

First round action saw UVic make easy work of the club team from the University of Washington. Grant Hatley paired up with Rob Fuhrman to take the men’s doubles match against UW by a score of 6-2, while Ana Curcin and Stephanie Chan dominated the women’s doubles match 6-1. Ian Harvey failed to break a sweat as he thumped UW in the men’s singles by a score of 6-0, and Morgan Klieber continued UVic’s early dominance with a stellar 6-1 performance in women’s singles.

As the weekend progressed, only UBC, SFU and UVic remained to battle for gold as all the American university tennis teams were sent home by their Canadian counterparts.

“It feels good to be able to shut [the Americans] down because the U.S. tends to do better in [tennis],” commented Harvey about competing against university-financed American teams.

UVic’s tennis team has been paying their own way to attend tournaments because they are not recognized as a varsity team. This is unfortunate, as their results have been outstanding in competing against American universities in the tournaments. They’ve won the USTA Pacific North West Sectionals for the past two years, and have now taken the UVic Invitational for the third time in as many years.

“We got off to a little bit of a rocky start, a little nervous, but otherwise we pulled it together,” Curcin said after the mixed doubles final. “SFU and us always have close matches. We know them well but we just have to keep our composure and stick with it.”

The tournament proved to be educational, as spectators sat flipping frantically through their English/German dictionaries trying to translate the obscenities shouted by an SFU player due to his frustrations with his shots.

UVic held a 10 game point lead heading into the final mixed doubles match, which guaranteed the win. Nonetheless, it was an exciting match with UVic taking the final tiebreak by a score of 6-5 (5-4). The win secured the trophy, but there were no celebrations as emotions boiled over. The SFU coach confronted UVic’s squad with explicit language about their sideline cheering antics.

“We’ve always had a rivalry with SFU,” added team captain and tournament organizer Daniel McCombe. On that account, the verbal confrontation after the finals seemed to be a common occurrence.

UVic heads to the Western Nationals, taking place in Richmond next month, to compete against universities from B.C. and Alberta for a ticket to the Nationals at the Rexall center in Toronto.