The Day The Dream Died

Juniors Alumni | After winning their division in the Tennis BC Spring League last month, the men's league team made the Meile Cup Regionals (Western Canadian). This tournament was held at the Burnaby Central Park tennis facility on the July 2nd to 4th weekend. Our men's team was looking forward to playing this regionals for a chance at the Meile Cup National Championships in Toronto in early August. The day started on Saturday with a comfortable 3-0 win in our first team-tie. In our second team-tie, the team faced a more formidable opponent from Tsawwassen. Martin Walenczykiewicz won his singles match 6-3, 7-5, but we lost our number two doubles match. Ken Liu and Jas Gill went down rather easily in 6-2, 6-3 score. Our number one doubles team started off well. Leading 4-0 in the first set, things went sideways for then on. Chris Weingand and Ilya Tihanenok battled hard but could not regained the lead and eventually lost 7-5, 7-5. Having lost this team-tie 1-2, our dream to Toronto went down with it.

The next day, our team faced the team from Salmon Arms for a third and fourth placing. Our team played with a reshuffled line up from the day before. Our number one doubles team claimed the only victory in three sets. Having lost the first set 5-7, Chris Weingand and Robbie Baumann found themselves down 3-5 in the second. They already knew our number two doubles team had lost their match only minutes before on the tennis court beside them. Weingand and Baumann put everything they had to keep the team-tie alive. They climbed back to tied the set at 5-5 and again at 6-6. A hard fought tie-breaker ended in their favour. The third set was all theirs to take. Leading 5-0 in the third set, they lost the only game. Jas Gill and Alex Tan lost the second doubles match with a score of 5-7, 4-6. Martin Walenczykiewicz was perfect all season in his singles matches. But that streak came to an end. After winning the first set 6-3, he went down in the next two sets and lost the match 3-6, 6-2, 6-3.

What a heart breaking weekend for the team. Our team was picked by the organizers to win this tournament. In the end the Toronto trip went to the team from the Sunshine Coast (Team Rawson).