Sectionals
by Cannon Campbell, Tennis Director/Owner

I recently had the privilege to coach the 2007 Southern Boys and Girls 16 and under Intersectional team. My team was made up of the top four boys and girls in the south in age division. We traveled to Shreveport, La to compete for a National Team Championship against 16 other sections from the USA along with a team from the Caribbean.

We were seeded three in the tournament out of 17 total teams which isn’t too bad. The top seed was Southern California and the 2nd seed was Texas. In the first round, we played the Middle States team and showed them no mercy winning 9-0. The play format was 3 boys’ singles, 3 girls’ singles, one boys’ doubles, one girls’ doubles, and one mixed doubles.

In the second round we played the North East section winning 8-1. In both the first and second match our Kate Fuller (#1 singles) won both of her matches relatively easily. We played the Eastern section in the third round and thought we could have a little more trouble with them…..but we didn’t. We beat them pretty easily as well winning 8-1.

Now the fun was about to start. We were now in the semi-finals playing the number 2 seed Texas. Texas was a well coached team with a great #1 girls singles player named Lilly Kimball. Their doubles teams had only lost a total of 8 games in 9 matches. In this match as I figured Lilly Kimball might be a little too much for Kate. Anyway, Lilly won 7-5, 6-4 in a close match (could have gone either way) but we ended up taking 4 singles and losing 2. Going into the doubles we only needed one match, which sounds pretty easy doesn’t it? Texas was down 2-4 on the previous day and swept all three doubles from a tough Florida team. Would this happen to us? No, we clinched the match with our mixed doubles team of Ian Chadwell and Kayla Duncan.

After upsetting mighty Texas, we now had to play Southern California, the tournament favorites. These guys are good is all I can tell you. Going in to the match I knew that we needed to dominate the boys’ side of things because our girls could be in for some trouble. I’m not saying our girls aren’t good but these girls are sick. We also won’t have it easy in the boys either seeing how Southern California’s #1 beat our #1 Bo Seal in the final of the Easter bowl 7-6 in the 3rd set. You talk about good these guys are absolutely incredible.

Now to the match; we started going down a tough 3-1 in singles matches, losing at the girls #1 and #3 singles as well as the boys #3 singles. Our first point came from #2 boys’ singles and we still had 2 matches out on the courts before the break for doubles. Bo was down 5-2 in the first set but fought his tail off and won 7-5, 7-5 in a thrilling match. Now we were down 3-2 with our #2 girls’ singles still out on the courts. Our #2 was Grace Min and she was playing what I believe to be the match of her life eventually beating Kaitlyn Christian 7-5 in the 3rd set. So going into the doubles we were tied 3-3 with a chance to win a National Championship.

We started out the doubles in great style, winning the first set in all three matches. But So Cal fought back, winning the second sets in boys’ and girls’ doubles. Things were looking good in mixed as it was pretty clear that we would win there even though it was taking a little longer than usual. At this point things took a turn for the worse, but we still had a chance. We dropped girl’s doubles which of course means we couldn’t lose anymore matches. The good news was we were up 4-0 in the 3rd of the boy’s doubles and we had just clinched the mixed making the score 4 each in matches. Again a momentum swing happens when our boy’s Bo and Ryan proceeded to lose 4 games in a row. Our boys dug deep and took a 5-4 lead. Keep in mind these kids are playing in front of about 200 people and the crowd and teams are going nuts(including me). We lost the lead and at 5 all we had 4 break points and fought off 3 game points before getting the break to go up 6-5. In the last game we held serve with a few tense moments actually going down break point twice.

We had upset Southern California to win a National Team Championship. Everyone stormed the court and I got my first dumping of Gatorade over my head, I didn’t mind one bit.

I was left feeling proud to be there representing the Southern section, to have my player Kate Fuller play, and to be representing you Windward Academy. I can only hope that another Windward player gets the opportunity to participate in this great event.