On Tuesday the Red Deer Tennis Club was home to the 41st annual Central Alberta Schools Athletic Association Tennis Tournament.
Over 100 students from all four of Red Deer’s high schools plus some from Forestburg, Camrose, and Lacombe took part in the zone championships.
Tournament coordinator Barb Young, who has organized the tournament since the beginning, said it’s only rained one year since its inaugural year.
“We’ve had about 110 players today and they can only enter one event,” she said. “I’ve been running it since 1981. We started off with about 20 kids and we had 170 before COVID. Now it’s just building it back up again.”
Throughout the day the kids participated in multiple events including men’s and women’s singles, doubles, and mixed doubles.
They played a modified double knockout format with all players losing in their first round going into the consolation event. All players were guaranteed two matches and every match in the championship events were eight-game sets. If they lost two games they were knocked out of the tournament.
Young explained they’re working on eventually bringing a provincial championship tennis tournament to the province. It was something they were going to implement before the pandemic but since that hit they’re starting over.
The zone championship is slowly building back up since the 90 who competed last year. This time around Young explained they even had some exchange students play from some of the bigger schools.
“This tournament I just want kids to play the game so they’ll continue to play into the future,” she added.
“At the Red Deer Tennis Club, we’re going to do a drop-in free for teens starting on Friday night from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on Sundays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Some kids are really excited about that.”
St. Joseph High School’s Matthew Murray defeated Lacombe’s Alexander Walker 8-4 in the men’s singles final. Meanwhile, Hunting Hills High School Alena Wang was victorious over Lindsay Thurber’s Mya Robinson 8-5 in the women’s singles.
Sam Bender and Noah Nakonechny from Lindsay Thurber took home the men’s doubles, and Notre Dame’s Paige and Sydney Zinger won the women’s doubles.
In mixed doubles, Lindsay Thurber’s Julia Woos and André Dunand were champions in the finals over Notre Dame.