usta eastern long islandvolume 8, issue 2 on the ball€¦ · usta eastern long islandvolume 8,...
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USTA Eastern Long Island
June 2019
Volume 8, Issue 2
On The Ball: News From LI
Coming Soon
6/29, 7/20 & 8/24 New York Beach Tennis Tournament @Crest Hollow Country Club (for more information and to register, click here)
7/9 Nassau County Kids’ Day
7/14 World Team Tennis Season starts
7/23 Hamptons Kids’ Day
8/1 Suffolk County Kids’ Day
Summer Fun is On the Way!
Summer tennis fun for kids is on the horizon, with three free Long Island Kids’ Days scheduled for July and Au-gust. Coordinated by the USTA Long Island Region Council along with Long Is-land Tennis Magazine, the events are as follows:
Nassau Kids’ Day Tuesday, July 9th (rain date 7/17) at the Old Westbury Golf & Country Club, 270 Wheatley Rd. in Old West-bury.
Hamptons Kids’ Day Tuesday, July 23rd (rain date 7/24) at the Shinnecock Ten-nis Club, 125 Sandy Hollow Rd. in Southampton
Suffolk Kids’ Day Thursday, August 1st (rain
date 8/6) at the Hamlet Golf & Country Club, 1 Clubhouse Dr. in Commack. All three kids’ days will begin with registration at 9:30am and activities running from 10am-1pm. The events will include tennis fun and learn-ing with local tennis pros plus carnival fun and games, a DJ, face painting, lunch
and beverages. All participants and groups must preregister. For more infor-mation and to sign up, please contact the fol-lowing: -for Old West-bury or South-
ampton, email [email protected] or [email protected] for Commack, contact [email protected] or [email protected]
The subject line should in-clude the date/location of the kids’ day you wish to attend. Please make sure to include your name, cell phone num-ber, email address, name of your group, and number and ages of children you’re bring-ing. Children should wear sneakers.
visit www.usta.com/
longislandregion
for details on all
events (please
note this is a NEW
web address)
...
follow us on Face-
book USTA Long
Island or Twitter
@USTA_LI
*Breaking News*
Three Mixed Doubles Teams Win At East-ern Sectionals
Long Island dominated last weekend at USTA League Mixed Doubles Eastern Sectionals, as three Regional teams won their Sectional championships and will head to Nationals competition in November. A fourth team was runner up in their group. Winning their divisions were the 18-and-over 7.0, 9.0 and 10.0 teams. The 8.0 team out of Point Set came in second.
See page 3 for photos and details on the Sectional competition.
Page 2
On The Ball: News from Long Island
Scenes from the LI Awards Dinner
More than 250 members of the Long Island tennis community attended the USTA Long Island Region’s 29th Annual Awards Dinner in May. Guest Speaker Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario, 14-time majors champion and International Tennis Hall of Fame member, spoke about her career and posed for pictures with all the awardees. USTA Long Island Regional Director Jonathan Klee discussed the Region’s tennis achievements during the past year and offered a look at future plans. For a look at the complete list of awardees as well as photos from the evening, please visit www.usta.com/longislandregion. The event’s most prestigious awards, including those for sportsmanship, went to the following:
*Karen Cadorette, Hy Zausner Lifetime Achievement Award*
*Bruce Moodnik, Vitas Gerulaitis “For the Love of Tennis” Award*
*Nicholas Haridopolos, Arthur Ashe Multi-Cultural Award*
*The Perri Family, Rose Buck Scalamandre Tennis Family of the Year Award*
*Geri Verola, Birdie Tarulli League Captain Sportsmanship Award*
*Lionel Goldberg, Blane Magee League Captain Sportsmanship Award*
*Nicholas Wernink, Anuj Agarwal Junior Sportsmanship Award*
*Lauren Zola, Jennifer Sherry Junior Sportsmanship Award*
Photo credit: James Alfalla
Page 3
On The Ball: News from USTA Leagues
Mixed 65-and-Over League Returns for 2nd Season League captains Sue D’Alessandro and Al Silverstein are excited to report that their USTA 65-and-over 8.0 Mixed league, the first and only one of its kind, has returned for its second season, bigger and better than ever. “We have established
three teams: Grand Slammers, Racquet Scientists and No Faults,” Sue says. “We played our first match at Hempstead Lake State Park and the second match at The Tennis King in Roslyn. We have several new players this season and more are signing up each week as the word gets out.” Participants posed for a group photo at Hempstead Lake State Park, where, Al says, “the good news is that they are re-surfacing four of the clay courts this season and four more next season.” The league is open to USTA members aged 65 and over and a 3.5 or higher rating. To register, visit Tennislink and enter team #1003424087. For more information, email [email protected] or [email protected]
Long Island Dominates at Sectionals Three Long Island 18-and-over Mixed Doubles USTA League teams won their Eastern Sectional championships and will head to Nationals in Orlando, Fla. this November. Winning teams at the Sectional competition, which took place the first weekend in June, were:
7.0 from Point Set, Captain Lori Sarnelli
9.0 from Carefree, Captains Paul Schnabel & Ben Marks
10.0 from Carefree, Captain Ben Marks Paul Schnabel, co-captain of the winning 9.0 team and co-captain, with Jenn Jaeger, of the runner-up 8.0 team out of Point Set, said “What a FUN FUN FUN FUN weekend! Long Island dominated!”
7.0 Point Set team
9.0 Carefree team
10.0 Carefree team
8.0 Point Set team
Page 4
On The Ball: News from USTA Eastern
Four Sectional legends were inducted into the USTA Eastern Hall of Fame during a ceremony held on April 25th at the New Yorker Hotel in New York City. The honorees were tennis coach and Rye Racquet club owner Kit By-ron; Columbia Univ. head coach Bid Goswami; former Eastern junior player Nick Greenfield; and former Eastern No. 1 Carole Wright.
Byron is best known for his junior program at Rye Racquet, but he be-gan his coaching career at the Port Washington Tennis Academy in 1972. “Port Washington was really the cen-ter of all things tennis in those days,” Byron says of the famed institution that produced John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis. “I was lucky enough to be on the court coaching a lot of the top players of that era.”
Byron ultimately left Port Washing-ton to develop the program at Rye. There, he coached three junior play-
ers who would eventually become French Open quarterfinalists, includ-ing former World No. 10 Kathleen Horvath. Horvath—the only player on the WTA tour to defeat Martina Nav-ratilova during the latter’s historic 1983 season— credits Byron directly when recalling her many tennis ac-complishments.
“Although I left to train in Florida when I was 13, all my success in ten-nis was due to Kit’s coaching exper-tise and unwavering dedication,” Horvath says now. “We spent about four years together, but they were the most important years in a female ten-nis player’s development—those years lay the foundation for success.”
Proceeds from the USTA Eastern Hall of Fame benefit the Junior Tennis Foundation (JTF) Grant and Scholar-ship Programs. Since its inception, the JTF has awarded more than $2 million in grants and scholarships for
aspiring junior and adaptive players, as well as NJTLs throughout the Eastern Section. The funds raised will afford many worthy and motivated children with incredible opportuni-ties to attend tennis camps, sectional and national competitions and educa-tional workshops that ultimately cul-tivate the love and prosperity of ten-nis.
(from left): JTF President Bob Ingersole with inductees Greenfield, Goswami, Wright and Byron, and USTA Eastern Executive Director Jenny Schnitzer
USTA Eastern Spring Highlights
Big Apple International Cup
USTA Eastern hosted the 2nd annual Big Apple International Cup June 3-7 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, with some of the best juniors from across the globe going head-to-head over five days of intense com-petition. The team event featured top junior squads from USA, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico and Spain. Ariana Pur-soo of Westbury was among those representing Team USA. “It is these kinds of exciting events that push and elevate player performance and accelerate improvement,” says Jay Devashetty, USTA Player Development National Coach and Director of Training Center-East. “The importance of having an event like this in the USTA Eastern Section—where the players can experience international competition at home—cannot be overstated."
Long Island Junior Team Tennis
Two big World wins! Long Island Junior Team Tennis wrapped up its season May 18-19, with teams from World Gym Setauket claim-ing victory in both the 18U Advanced (photo at right) and 14U In-termediate divisions. Suffolk County Junior Tennis League Team 2 placed runner-up in the 18U division, while Eastern Athletic Blue Point Team A finished second in 14U.
The World Gym teams will now go on to represent Long Island in the USTA Eastern JTT sectionals, to be held June 15-16 in Albany, N.Y. Teams from Carefree Racquet and Christopher Morley also competed, and over 150 juniors participated in JTT throughout the season. Plans are underway to continue expanding JTT on Long Island.
USTA Eastern Hall of Fame Inducts Four
Page 5
On The Ball: News from High School
Boys’ High School Season Highlights After an exciting boys’ high school tennis season, the results are in!
NEW YORK STATE CHAMPION-SHIPS
In New York State tennis competition, Syosset’s Kabir Rajpal (right) was runner up in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Tournament held at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing. In doubles play, Roslyn’s Mikey Weitz & Adrian Tsui won 4th place, while Syosset’s Peter Bukary & Bri-an Gao were the consolation run-ners-up.
The USTA Long Is-land Re-gional Council was pleased to provide sweatshirts to all Nas-sau and Suffolk
participants. The LI Region was also happy to support a USTA Eastern-sponsored Ice Cream Social held dur-ing the state tournament, to which all the state players were invited.
LONG ISLAND CHAMPIONSHIP
Port Washington defeated Half Hollow Hills East by a score of 4-3 to win the 2019 Long Island Boys High School Tennis Championship. The Tourna-ment was held at the Hamlet Golf and Country Club in Commack. All players
on both teams received plaques provid-ed by the USTA LI Regional Council.
Pictured bel0w are Port Washington (in blue) and Hills East (in red), their Coaches, Shane Helfner (Port) and Steve Ferrentello (Hills East), Nassau Tennis Coordinator Mike Kazin, Suf-folk Tennis Coordinator Mark Mensch, USTA LI High School Representative Mike Pavlides and USTA LI Regional Director Jonathan Klee.
In team competition, Port Washington beat Syosset 4-3 to win the Nassau County Championship while Half Hol-low Hills East defeated the Commack 4-2 to win the Suffolk County Champi-onship.
INDIVIDUAL PLAY/NASSAU
Syosset’s Kabir Rajpal won the Nassau Singles title at the tournament played at Eisenhower Park. Wheatley’s Karan Amin (photo left) was runner up while Griffin
Schlessinger of Cold Spring Harbor (3) and Massapequa’s Niles Gaffar (4) also won All-NYS Honors. The top three players competed at States.
In doubles play, the Roslyn team of Mikey Weitz & Adrian Tsui (photo right) won the Nassau County champi-onship and were joined at States by Hewlett’s Logan Fliegel & Stephan Gershfeld (2), Syosset’s Brian Gao & Peter Bukary (3). These three duos and Manhasset’s Ai-dan O’Connor & Steven Salerno (4)
won All-NYS Honors.
INDIVIDUAL PLAY/SUFFOLK
Harborfields’ Alex Rzehak won the Suf-folk County Singles championship, and Mike Koscinski of Center Moriches was runner up. They were joined at States by Alan Sabovic of Connetquot (3). These three and Matt Strogach of Com-mack (4) achieved All-NYS Honors.
In doubles action, the Hills East team of Michael Han &Albert Cheng won first place and competed at States along with James Yu & Eddie Liao of Commack (2) and Ishan Varmat & Aryan Sethi of Hills East (3). The Southold/Greenport duo of Jacob & Xavi-er Kahn (4) also achieved All-NYS honors.
Long Island Tennis Maga-zine named Jack Gorman of Val-
ley Stream Central as Nassau County Coach of the Year. He is pic-tured below with Coun-ty Coordinator Mike Kazin.
Photos courtesy of LI Tennis Magazine.
Nassau Team at States
Suffolk Team at States
Cheng & Han
Yu & Liao
Port Washington: LI Champions
Page 6
On The Ball: News from High School
Blue Wristbands Recognize No-Cut Teams
The USTA Long Island Regional Council, under the guidance of High School Rep-resentative Mike Pavlides, provid-ed blue wrist-bands to more than 800 Varsity
and JV boys this season in recognition of their participation on No-Cut teams.
The Council chose blue wristbands to recognize and support Autism Aware-ness during the month of April. “We are pleased that so many coaches across Long Island have committed to the idea of No-Cut tennis as a way to make sure that all athletes who want to participate will have the opportunity to do so,” Pavlides said. Participating teams and their coaches were:
Nassau: Massapequa (Mike Pavlides), New Hyde Park (Barry Kubit), Carle Place (Jen Sussman), Manhasset (Eileen Cuneo), Lyn-brook (Lindsay Trugman), South
Side (Chris Colesanti), Great Neck South (Joshua Dugan), Cold Spring Harbor (Bruce
Moodnik), Hicksville (Henry Chiu), MacArthur (Phil Machmer), Oceanside (Jamie Connolly), Glen Cove (Chris MacDonald), Sewanhaka/Carey (Michael Soto), Hewlett (Abby Sam-lin), Farmingdale (Eric Perles), Long Beach (Sue Hirschbein), Baldwin (Nick LaForgia), Port Washington (Shane Helfner), Clarke (Adnen Ayari), Garden City (Jennifer Soper), North Shore (Brian Kline) and Mepham JV (Eduardo Mar-tinez). Suffolk: Bellport (Mark Jen-nings), North Babylon (Mario Fiore/Maggie Smith), Ward Mel-ville (Erick Sussin/Christine Klouda) and Stony Brook (Joe Arias).
Also receiving wristbands were: Nas-sau team finalists (Syosset & Port Washington), Suffolk Champion (Half Hollow Hills East), Section VIII (Nassau) & Section XI (Suffolk) play-ers participating in the NYS tourna-ment and Junior Team Tennis teams across Long Island.
South Side Ace for Autism The South Side High School Boys’ Varsity Tennis team held its 2nd Annual “Ace for Autism” clinic this Spring. Coach Chris Colesanti, Captains Justin
Seplowe and Phil Frank, and the team ran a tennis clinic for students/children in the communi-ty with special needs. De-spite the rain and clouds the kids had a great time playing tennis games and drills and winning prizes.
Bellport
Cold Spring Harbor
Great Neck South Hicksville and Carle Place
Long Beach
Lynbrook
Massapequa
Ward Melville
Commack Breast Cancer Tourney
Commack’s Boys’ Tennis Team, under the leadership of Coach Jimmy Delevante, held its 2019 Breast Cancer Awareness Fund-raiser. Tennis team members, teachers and friends participated, raising $2,000 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
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sport," for people of all ages and abilities to play and enjoy the game.
Through the efforts of volunteers, USTA staff and strategic partners, we
are dedicated to the highest standards of integrity, honesty and ethics in
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corporate partners enjoy the "sport for a lifetime."
USTA Eastern Long Island
Visit us at: www.usta.com/longislandregion On The Ball: News From LI is published quarterly by the USTA Eastern Long
Island Region. Written and produced by Jacki Binder. Edited by Michael Pavlides.
Founded by Daniel Burgess.
To subscribe to On the Ball: News from
LI, please send your email address to:
USTA members can enjoy discounted tickets when World Team Tennis hits New York this sum-mer. John Isner and
other stars will compete for the Em-pire of WTT beginning July 14. Use code Eastern19 for 20% off tickets. Click here to purchase... The USTA LI Regional Council was pleased to sup-port the 14th Annual Robbie’s Run in Merrick in June. This 5K road race and family fun day raises
money to place Auto-mated External De-fibrillators (AEDs) everywhere children play sports. The event also raises money to
provide CPR and AED train-ing classes for youth and adult sports pro-grams. The USTA LI
has been involved with this event since the beginning. Each year, LI pros and junior players volunteer to provide tennis instruction to children
during the family fun portion of the day. Special thanks to the girls from Merrick Avenue Middle School who helped out!… Seven-time Majors champion Virginia Wade visited the high performance players at Chris-topher Morley Tennis Club in May. Wade, who reached a high of World No. 2 in 1975, owns 55 career titles in both singles and doubles during her 26-year career. A British citizen, she played Fed Cup tennis for 17 years and
was a member of Brit-ain’s Wightman Cup team for 21 years. She was inducted into the International Tennis
Hall of Fame in 1989. At Morley, she spoke to the junior play-ers about her career and accom-plishments,
answered questions and gave on-court pointers… Hofstra U. sophomore Alejandra Ruffini was named to the Google Cloud Academic All-District I First Tennis Team. Ruffini, with a 4.0 GPA, led the Pride with a
20-9 record for the 2nd consecutive sea-son. The Milan, Italy native was 17-5 in dual matches playing at the No. 1 and No. 2 flights… In other Hofstra news, ten-
nis team members represented the USTA Eastern Section at the prestig-ious George Myers Church Cup at the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pa. Current team members Shawn Jack-son and Julien Wolfe, and 2019 grad-uate Marcus Smith were part of the cup-winning team. Hofstra Tennis
Head Coach Jason Pa-sion cap-tained the USTA East-ern team. The win was just the fourth in
the last 30 years for the Eastern Sec-tion team…. World #1 Naomi Osaka played on Long Is-land as a child. Here she is, pictured at Point Set Racquet Club with her sister.
USTA Eastern Long Island Regional Council
Executive Committee
Jonathan Klee, Regional Director Michael Pavlides, Past Regional Director Sunny Fishkind, Vice Regional Director
Randi Wilkins, Secretary