Recent Events
MTA-El Cerrito Interclub
On September 8th at 8:30 in the morning it was very foggy atop the hills in El Cerrito where we were to meet the El Cerrito Tennis Club for an interclub match. As the 9:00 start time came near and all the players began to show up, the fog subsided, the sun came out, and it was time to greet all the players and explain our day’s format.
Today we would play some friendly tennis with our two groups intertwined in doubles games. We began by randomly selecting a partner from the opposing club. My great plan to have everyone lay out their racquets and then each player to randomly select one from the other team’s pile (to determine your partner) failed miserably. I had forgotten that this would create twice as many teams as we could have, with each player to having two partners. After that bit of confusion, we started over with only one team picking up their future partner’s racquet, then it was time to explain the format. We would play (4) no-ad games and a 5-point sudden-death tiebreak as needed to determine the winning team. The winners would move up a court, the losers, take a bye and let others jump in to play the next round. This allowed for quite a bit of on-court tennis with a minimum of time out. With four hours of play, everyone had their fill of tennis.
As it turned out, both the Montclair Tennis Association and El Cerrito Tennis Club players were evenly matched, so we had some great games. Everyone was having a lot of fun.
Food began at the beginning of the event with donuts, pastries, and coffee, and around lunch time we had the savory potluck items brought out for eating. With the quantity of sweets, most folks left on a sugar high.
1:00 came around quickly and after a bit of cleaning up it was time to say goodbye to our new tennis friends. I heard “let’s do this again” from several folks so maybe we can make this an annual event for MTA.
Thank you to all eight MTA players and the twelve El Cerrito Tennis Club that made this a fun event.
Kenny Goodman
Montclair Tennis Association, Events Coordinator