Have you noticed the new banner hanging on the fence by the tennis courts at Ting Park? It reads: USTA League, 2021 USTA North Carolina, Adult 18 & over, 3.0 Women State Champions. That’s right! State Champions!
Team Captain Meghan Rider describes how this exceptional team of 15 tennis players won the USTA Southern state championship with an undefeated record and then went on to compete against other state championship teams at Sectionals.
“The sport of tennis has exploded over the past year due to Covid. According to the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and Tennis magazine, from 2019 to 2020 there was a 22% increase in overall participation in the game, a 44% increase in new players, and tennis racquet sales jumped 38%.1 There are more people playing tennis around here than ever before! I started planning a team back in fall of 2020 with the goal of winning a State Championship, and everyone on this team was up for the challenge.
North Carolina is divided into 14 different leagues or areas. The area of NC where we play tennis is called Central League, and the local governing body that runs our league is the Western Wake Tennis Association (WWTA). WWTA encompasses tennis play within Cary, Morrisville, Apex, Holly Springs, and Fuquay-Varina. Some team captains make their teams out of private clubs (like Sunset Ridge, Prestonwood, MacGregor Downs, etc.) if they are a member, and others—like me—make teams out of the town they live in. I am a long-time resident of Holly Springs, going on 18 years, and I captain quite a bit out of Holly Springs. Our home courts are at Ting Park.
In recreational tennis, players compete at different levels, from 2.5 all the way up to 5.0. A player’s level increases or decreases by increments of .5 and are determined by USTA at the end of each calendar year. There also are different age groups within each level; for example, 18+, 40+, 55+ and even 65+.
This team is a women’s spring 18+ 3.0 team, and each match has two singles courts and three doubles courts. To win a match, a team needs to win three courts or more.
Earlier this year, we started our USTA 18+ 3.0 spring season with 15 women on our team and we were in a weekend flight since most of us work full time. We won our flight, and our record was 8-0. We moved on to the local Central League playoffs against the daytime flight winner and we won. In June, we moved on to the USTA 18+ State Championship at Lake Norman where we faced other area league champions like Eno, Foothills, Western NC, and Sandhills. Twelve of us attended and we went 4-0 in pool play, moved on to the semifinal and went up against Capital and won, and moved on to the state championship match against Piedmont and won. Our record was 15-0. We were presented with a State Championship banner which is now proudly hung on the fence at Ting.
In July, we went to Sectionals in Rome, Georgia. USTA divides up the US into different Sections and we are in the Southern Section which comprises nine states: North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama. All the state championship teams met at Sectionals and our team played four pool play matches. The top four teams move on to the semifinals.
Eleven of us were able to attend Sectionals and we went 2-2. Our two losses came down to a match tiebreak on one of our doubles courts and we lost both by just two points! It was so close! Our team was the only team to beat Tennessee—the team that won it all—and we beat them 4-1. We had the least number of games lost out of all teams after pool play, with a higher game win percentage than the third- and fourth-place teams that moved on, and three out of the four teams that moved on to the semifinals were teams we had to play in pool play.
It may have come down to losing a couple of points on two matches that cost us moving on, but everyone on this team was glad to get this far, showed great sportsmanship, we had a fantastic time and I know we represented our state, our local league, and the town of Holly Springs very well!”
Congratulations to Meghan and the players on her roster: Kimberly Durland, Tiffany Eastley, Kim Hilt, Anne Hungate, Suzanne Jeska, Shelly Jude, Sabrina Kane, Laurie Keilholz, Connie Kim, Angie Ray, Emily Starritt, Jennifer Straughn, Jan White, and Katie Whitley. You’ve made Holly Springs proud!
If you’re a tennis player looking for a local team, or you want to learn more about recreational tennis leagues in our area, visit the Western Wake Tennis Association website at https://westernwaketennis.com/. WWTA offers women’s and men’s leagues as well as programs and leagues for youth players. You can also find information about the Abilities Tennis Association of North Carolina (ATANC) which develops adaptive tennis programs for people with intellectual disabilities, Tennis for Life which supports breast cancer survivors of any tennis-playing ability, and Wheelchair Tennis.
