Football or soccer referee or coach whistle, tracksuit, close-up
After a one-year break, the city tennis tournament was back on Friday, and the young players had the day almost all to themselves.
A total of 60 juniors aged 16 and younger competed in Columbus North and Donner Park. The tournament became a USTA-sanctioned Level 7 event in 2019 and will be held again this year after the tournament was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nine city junior championships were decided on Friday and five were won by the people of Columbus. Columbus swept the 16U and 14U boys and girls divisions.
Annabelle Sun, 14, who will be a newcomer to Columbus North, won the girls’ 16U class.
“I’ll be 15 in October, so I figured if I started dating the older folks since I started high school, I could prepare for the girls’ (high school) season,” Sun said. “I wanted to gain gaming experience before the start of the season.”
Sun defeated Madelyn Santner of Bloomington 8-2, Rachel Panko of Florence, Kentucky, 8-1 and Avery Musgrave of Seymour 8-0 in the round robin event for their first tournament win.
“I think I was pretty good considering my right ankle hurt a little,” Sun said. “I played better compared to other days because I didn’t have a lot of casual mistakes and not a lot of double faults. I wasn’t really expecting to win,” said Sun. “I was just hoping that if I did well I could win.”
Austin Clark won the boys’ 16U division, which was also a round robin. Clark defeated Parth Gupta 602, Sid Jain 6-3, Henry Ulrich 6-0 and Darren Li 6-2.
“I think it was really competitive,” said Clark. “I was just trying to be aggressive. Obviously it’s a really hot day outside so I tried to stay hydrated and overall I think I ran really well today. I got in pretty confident and I’m very confident What I did today. Everyone played great today and I think we all had a lot of fun. “
This was also the first tournament championship for Clark, who will be a sophomore year at North.
“I’ve played my fair share of tournaments and I’m really happy to finally take this win,” said Clark. “I think I can really have a chance to do varsity this year so I think that was good for me.”
Lucy Bergman von Columbus defeated Ella Dreyer von Sellersburg in the final 6-0 and won the girls class 14U.
Parth Shah, who will be a freshman to North, has only lost two games in three games to reach the boys’ 14U title. In the final, Shah Samuel defeated Song of Columbus 6-0.
“I think I played well,” said Shah. “I played very consistently. It felt good. I had confidence and am proud of myself.”
Ledger Cissell from Sellersburg won the boys 12U A Division with a 6-1 win over Luca Devidze from Columbus in the final. Soham Gugale of Columbus defeated Jax Burt of Nashville, Indiana 6-3 in the boys’ 12U B final.
Seymour’s Shunshue Takeuchi defeated Corydon’s Cohen Cissell 6-2 in the boys 14U final B. Aryan Tatineni of Columbus, Ohio, won 6-1’s Shoho Sato of Columbus, Indiana for the Coed 10U championship.
In the case of adults, two divisions will be decided on Monday and seven more in North on Tuesday. The final on Monday will be held in the women’s open doubles and the men’s 2.5 singles.
The finals in the men’s open singles and women’s open singles will take place on Tuesday at 5.30 p.m. Also on Tuesday there will be finals in the men’s open doubles, mixed open doubles, 40-year-old men’s doubles, men’s 4.0 singles and men’s 4.0 doubles.
