By Robb Fenton
Lloydminster’s biggest tennis tournament was slowed, but wasn’t stopped by the weather this past weekend.
Despite having some issues Sunday, the annual Calroc Tennis Tournament was a big success providing the Border City with some quality tennis.
“Things went pretty well. The weather treated us good except for Sunday. We had a pretty neat bunch of players in there,” said Lloydminster Tennis president Rod Shopland.
As usual, the numbers were solid for the tournament hovering around 30.
Shopland said it’s never a bad thing to add more, but having the number they did was almost perfect.
“We had 29 players this year. We were full again, it was manageable, but we can handle a few more. With the courts we have, we used every second of court time we could,” he said.
The only glitch in the weekend was the play Sunday, which was interrupted because of the weather.
Shopland found a solution to that problem, however, by changing the format a little bit for some of the groups.
“We didn’t get everything played on Sunday, but we were fortunate because we did some groups just a round robin style. Instead of doing playoffs we just settled it after the round robin with those results,” Shopland explained. “Fortunately we were able to finish all those off on Saturday. No one was really upset, they understood the situation.”
What Shopland called the highlight of the weekend was the play of one of the young athletes who hit the court.
Brandon Rowland walked away with the 3.5 men’s singles B title, despite being only 14 years old competing against some tough competition.
“One of the biggest surprises which was an awesome thing to see, Brandon, who has been through our program, took the B side in the 3.5 and he took out some pretty experienced older players to do it. He was pretty pumped when he was finished,” Shopland said. “People that saw his matches were pretty impressed with him. He played just excellent.”
Not only were the numbers strong, but Shopland said he was happy with the calibre of the players who participated.
“It was a good calibre. It’s the same as most years. Everyone was very close and our local guys did very well in the 4.5. We really had some good matches and were very close,” he said. “A lot of them went to tie-breakers and when you’re playing tie-breakers for the finals, you know the calibre is close.”
Shopland said it was a great weekend for tennis in Lloydminster and overall the 2010 tournament was a success.
“I thought it was a success. I was happy with the play, people were very understanding about the Sunday weather and the sponsorship was great. It would be a lot smaller tournament if we didn’t have the sponsors,” Shopland said, adding a big thank you to everyone who helped out. “I think all in all, the highlight of the weekend was Brandon and his performance. He came up through our club through the lesson program and it was so good to see one of our kids come up and play so well against these veterans. It was an awesome thing to see.”