Tournament of Champions

A PLAYERS MAKE FOR YET ANOTHER STELLAR TOURNAMENT

By Jason Steinberg

This year’s USTA League Tennis Southern Sectional Championships presented in Chrysler in Mobile, Ala. has been a tournament filled with friendships, pleasant competition and a whole lot of fun. The second half of competition is coming to a close, and there are only champions leaving the courts.

Teams have been unbelievably gracious and friendly towards everyone the entire week. While all of these teams are competing to advance to Nationals, teams have shown heart and spirit no matter the situation. Every single level has played hard and given their best shot at winning a Sectional championship.

No matter whether they actually came away with an invitation to Nationals, every team leaving Mobile this week is and has been a champion. All of these players have worked hard on their games to get to Sectionals, a level that most people never get the opportunity to experience. There are new, first- year teams and veteran teams that have been competing for years, but they all share one common passion: a love for tennis!

There was a diverse group of participants in this year’s competition. There were mother/daughter combinations, pregnant players, senior veteran, and club pros among others. Walking around the Mobile Tennis Center and the other three tournament sites, you could see smiling faces and thousands of people showing off their love of this great game.

It truly has been a great collection of players from the USTA’s largest section. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee were well represented this week at the tournament. Sectionals marks another successful year of league tennis in USTA Southern, and it looks like it will continue to grow in the near future!