Junior Team Fall League | CTC fielded a junior team in the Tennis BC Junior Team Fall League as a last minute decision. Our team was placed in the Senior Boys' Smash Division for the 13 to 16 years old category. The Smash Division consisted of six teams and the games were contested on a 'home' and 'away' basis from October to December. Each game consisted of four singles and two doubles matches. We played our team games at one of the five indoor venues: Grant Connell Tennis Centre in North Vancouver, Hollyburn Country Club in West Vancouver, Sportstown Tennis Club in Richmond, Town and Country Tennis Club in Tsawwassen and Vancouver Lawn Tennis Club in Vancouver.
Our junior team consisted of Matthew Wong, Zach Amaral, Brandon Nam Luu, Jason Wu, Alexander Twardowski and Arman Turna. Our team led the division tables early on defeating the Jericho Tennis Club team 6-0 and The Independents team 5-1. Two draws followed against the teams of Net Force One and The Smashers. Our team continued with three more successes. Against the Northshore Advantage team, we won 4-2, demolished the Jericho Tennis Club team 6-0 once again, and claimed a 4-2 win against The Independents team.
Our fall from the top of the tables came in the eight game with our only team loss in the league season and this was against the Net Force One team. They were behind in a close second place. We knew going into this game we had to maintain our lead. We were lucky to draw 3-3 against them the first time around. In that first encounter, three of the four matches went to a third set super-tiebreak. We won three of the four third sets. Our goal this time was to force a draw once again. If luck was on our side we could finish with a 4-2 win. At worst we would loose 2-4 and still hang on to our lead by being superior on the match win-lost record by one match.
The unthinkable happened and we lost 1-5 and slipped into second place even though we were tied in the points and in the match win-lost categories. We lost out on the sets percentages (and also the games percentages). Amaral won our only point in his number three singles against Matthew Jackson 6-3, 6-3. Our team lost three other matches on the third set super-tiebreak. Wong played the number one singles against Christopher Jackson and lost out the third set by the super-tiebreak score of 10-5. Luu lost the third set 10-8 in his number four singles. Luu and Amaral lost 10-6 in their number two doubles match.
Despite being bumped down to second spot, our team was still in a good technical position to move back into top spot. For the final two games, our goal was to win clean. We met The Smasher in our ninth game but managed only a 4-2 win. Our team fought hard but lost two three sets matches. Turna lost the third set 10-7 despite having won the first set 6-1 in his number four singles match. Our number one doubles team of Twardowski and Wong lost 12-10 in the super-tiebreak against Rahim Mitha and Jacob Adam Ismail-Keys. They lost the second set in a tie-break as well.
The Net Force One ninth game against The Independents also ended in the 4-2 win for them. The chance was there for us to take the upper hand in the match win-lost record but our team failed to do it. At this point, our chance to over take the Net Force One on our final game had been greatly reduced. However small the chance had become, technically we are still not out of it and with some luck we may still snatch the title back.
Net Force One was to face Jericho Tennis Club for their final game. The Jericho Tennis Club had the weakest team in our division and we expected our rivals to win it easily. For our team final game against the Northshore Advantage we were given a 6-0 walkover due to their transportation snafu. We had been determined to make it clean for our final game and this 6-0 walkover for us put the pressure back on the Net Force One team to defeat the Jericho team 6-0 or faced coming in second in the division.
Alas, lady luck was not on our side. The Net Force One team did beat Jericho Tennis Club 6-0, but they almost gave it to us when their number three singles player Kyle Gordon Clancy managed to scrap by in his match against Nicolas Gauthier in a third set score of 10-8. We were hoping they would loose one match and they almost did. In the end the Net Force One team claimed the division title and the Coquitlam Tennis Club team had to settle for second place. Nevertheless it was a good performance overall from our junior team. Well done juniors!
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