As summer winds down, we are reminded every day that outdoor sports will eventually give way to those of an indoor nature.
Or so we hope.
The Yellowknife Tennis Club was back in tournament mode on Aug. 22 with its junior tournament for those in the beginner and intermediate programs. The high performance crew didn't participate as they compete in the adult tournaments during the season.
A total of 16 players – nine in the beginners and seven in the intermediate – hit the court to play in a round-robin-style of event with the winner being determined by the number of games they won. When all was said and done, Daniel Eli-Croft won the beginners division while Joe Curran was tops in the intermediate group.
Slavica Jovic of the Yellowknife Tennis Club said it went as well as it could have, even if the attendance was a bit lower than anticipated.
“Some of the kids may have been nervous about playing,” she said. “We have over 20 kids in our clinics – we've had to turn kids away this year – but they may have thought they weren't ready to play in a tournament. We tried to run it the same way we held our clinics this year.”
James McCarthy/NNSL photo
The court set-up for each group was different with the beginners playing half-court games and the intermediate group using the full court. The winner of each game was the first to reach 10 points.
This is not the end of the clinic season, said Jovic, as they will continue for at least to the beginning of September, so long as the weather holds out.
The amount of players in each clinic were structured in such a way so guidelines on group numbers were kept, she added.
“The younger kids, those under 12, didn't have to worry about distancing so there was no enforcement of that,” she said. “For the older kids, we could only have a maximum of 25 people on the courts at one time, so with four coaches out on the court, we could have 21 kids.”
The capped numbers also meant a good coach-to-player ratio, said Jovic.
“Having so many certified coaches out there made it easy for Jan (Martinek, head tennis pro) to be a roaming coach,” she said.