MU club tennis competes at nationals

The team will be in Surprise, Ariz., this week.

By Brian Haenchen

Published April 16, 2010

Participating in the United States Tennis Association's Tennis on Campus program, Missouri's team finished second in the Missouri Valley Sectional Championship last March to earn an automatic bid to the USTA's National Campus Championship in Surprise, Ariz., this week.

The USTA's campus matches are dual matches. This format has teams play a series of both men's and women's singles and doubles matches before concluding with a mixed doubles game. Whoever wins the majority of those matches is the overall winner.

Missouri's 14-player roster (10 males and four females) has more well-rounded talent than many of the teams they have played this season and is a feature that benefits them under the dual match format.

"Every team seems to have at least one good player," senior Drew Brightfield said. "But it seems to be our depth that is impressive. We have a good ability to interchange players at several positions."

In addition to the 14-player roster, there is a four-person executive board that makes decisions with respect to the roster, matches and travel.

"In all honesty, (president and junior) Lily (Masoumy) takes care of a lot of the administrative stuff," Drew Brightfield said. "She corresponds with the USTA and Mizzou for the most part, but we all make decisions together when it comes to the team. We plan matches and work out the logistics of getting there. We all did the work to put together the nationals trip. Lily deserves most of the credit, though."

Missouri has had a USTA team for a few years, but due to lack of participation and leadership, the program went unnoticed. The executive board has rewritten the team's constitution to help restructure the program and make it a more relevant club on campus.

"The university has had a team for some time," sophomore Doug Brightfield said. "But due to a serious decline in leadership and participation, it had gone by the wayside for years. It has basically been completely overhauled in the last year and a half."

The most important factor that is taken into account by the executive board before scheduling practices and matches is each player's school schedule. The board goes out of its way to make sure that playing does not interfere with academics.

"Fortunately, we are able to handle school work and the tennis team very well," Drew Brightfield said. "We try and schedule practices outside of class time, ideally at night. The only time we have had tennis interfere with school is for nationals. Otherwise, we schedule dual matches with teams on Saturdays."

The USTA National Campus Championship features a 64-team field, composed of 51 automatic bids (awarded to the top three teams from each section) and 13 at-large bids. Once the field has been set, teams are separated into 16 groups of four and a series of round-robin matches are played within each pool.

The top team from each group advances to the Gold Bracket to play for the national championship, as the second, third, and fourth teams in the standings are placed in the Silver, Bronze, and Copper brackets, respectively.

Founded in 2000 by the USTA, the Tennis on Campus program offers athletes the opportunity to continue playing tennis in college, but at a more recreational level. Teams compete throughout the school year in order to improve their ranking heading into fall when the season officially begins, with numerous tournaments hosted by various colleges. It is not until the spring sectional and national championships that the season heats up.

The USTA National Campus Championship began April 15 and will run through April 17.