Whittie tennis players who couldn’t throw together an IM team before the deadline but who still want to play competitive tennis now have a second option: Whitman USTA club tennis.
Started by second-year, Lizzy Schiller, club tennis offers members the opportunity to play competitive tennis against other schools without the substantial time commitment that Varsity athletes have to sign up for.
Practices are held Tuesdays from 4:30pm-6:00pm and Fridays from 2:00pm- 3:30pm at the Bratton Indoor Tennis Arena. On Sundays, practices are held from 11am-12:30am on the outdoor courts.
Practices are planned and run by the three co-captains of the team: Kelsey Fritts, Seth Dawson and Julie Irvine.
“Co-captains have been running drills, having us play doubles and singles sets against each other, and other fun tennis games,” said Schiller. “It’s really great because they get to plan out what we’re going to do at practices, and since it’s three different people planning out the three different practices, it never gets boring!”
According to Schiller, the club has received a positive response from Whitman students.
“At the student activities fair a lot of people were interested and I had over 40 sign up,” said Schiller. “Out of those 40, about 25 or so have come to practice, and we have been averaging about 15 players or so coming to the practices consistently.”
The team will send ten players (the top five men and top five women) from the club team to Portland, Ore., in late October to square off against other USTA Club Tennis teams in the USTA Tennis on Campus Sectionals.
This year, 14 schools will be competing in the Pacific Northwest Sectionals for the coveted sectional title. The University of Oregon took the title last year, narrowly beating out the University of Victoria team in a super-tiebreaker.
The USTA Tennis on Campus program uses a unique scoring system called the World TeamTennis format to decide a winner. Instead of having to win two out of three sets, TeamTennis requires that a team only win five games. If teams are tied at 4 games apiece, then a super-tiebreaker of 9 points is played to decide a winner.
Schiller was inspired to start a club tennis team after talking with men’s Varsity head coach, Jeff Northam.
“Jeff Northam was the person who gave me the idea last year: he was definitely my main motivator,” said Schiller. “After participating in both seasons of IM tennis and getting to know a bunch of people who play tennis, I decided that Jeff was right, club tennis would be a really awesome thing for the Whitman community!”
According to Schiller, getting a club tennis program up-and-running at Whitman was a bit intimidating at first, but well worth it.
“It’s definitely a very big task to get everything started, and I was extremely nervous at first, but everything’s going really, really well,” said Schiller. “It’s a great tennis network and I’ve already met so many awesome tennis players that I most likely wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
Despite its success, club tennis is still in the process of gaining actual Whitman club recognition. Because it is not designated as an official club, club tennis receives no funding from the ASWC budgeting committee.
“Since we don’t have funding, and most likely won’t be able to get funding this year, we’ve been thinking of different fundraising strategies and have been contributing our own money to a whole bunch of new tennis balls,” said Schiller.
This upcoming Saturday, the team will square off against Div. 1 Eastern Washington University in pre-sectionals practice match.
