The Grass Is Greener On Our Side!

Day 3 | By the end of the third day, our team qualified for 5 finals on Saturday. The day began almost perfectly. Unlike the day before, our team were involved in four matches that started at 10 am. Two of the three doubles teams proved successful. The under 14 partnership of Steven Shen and Alexander Baumann easily defeated Max Pollen and Jason Scully, both from Victoria, 6-1, 6-0 to be the first to move into the finals. Ilya Tihanenoks and Daniel Shen were next to progress onto the finals of the boys under 18 doubles event. They beat the No. 2 seeded team of Sam Smyth and Conor Rencher 6-3, 6-3. The doubles team of Tyron Wheatley and William Baumann did not quite succeed in their match. After taking the first set and up 5-3 in the second, they could not hold on to their lead and lost to Richie Hall and Matt Hough 4-6, 7-6, 6-3 in the boys under 18 event. Mark Lintott survived a pair of tie-breakers in beating David Freeman to move onto the consolation semi-finals of the boys under 16 singles event. Later in the day he was unsuccessful in his semi-finals match, losing 6-2, 6-3 to Sam Smyth.

Two of our girls were involved in the semi-finals of the girls under 18 singles. Nicola Brevik playing in the first semi-finals quickly dispost of Laura Grainer 6-2, 6-2 and earned herself a spot in the finals. The other semi-finals saw Stefanie Baumann competed against Alexandra Khadzhyan of Vancouver. Baumann was looking to join her teammate Brevik in the finals, but Khadzhyan proved too strong for her and she went down in 6-1, 6-0. The third semi-finals match for our team was between Alex Baumann and Andre Sobati. Right from the start the 13 year old Baumann maintained his high level of play and romped through his match 6-0, 6-1, and earned a spot in the finals of the boys under 14 singles. Alex older brother William, was looking forward to doing the same as his brother when he took on Troy Tronrud in his under 16 singles semi-finals. He was broken in his first service game but broke back three games later and went ahead on his serve to lead 3-2 in the first set. Tronrud came back stronger and took the first set 6-3. Baumann fell back early in the second set, but fought to stay in the match late in the set as a few games went to deuces. Ultimately, Tronrud held his lead and took the match 6-3, 6-2.

The last person on our team to make it to the finals was Daniel Shen. In the semi-finals he had to face the No. 1 seeded player in the draw. Shen wasted no time in taking the first set 6-0. After Conor Rencher of Shawnigan Lake held serve to open the second, Daniel regain his charge and took the next six of seven games and the match. Delta's Sydney Delaney won the consolation finals of the girls under 18 beating our own Meagen Lens in straight sets. After playing a 3 hours and 45 minutes match yesterday, Lens did not quite have the energy to see her through this match. Mark Linott rounded out the day when he and partner Ryan Hall lost to John Shukin and Piers Zdan in the consolation semi-finals of the boys 18 doubles. After our group dinner at a restaurant, we went to the bowling alley and bowled a couple of games to take the edge off three days of tennis.