So when the Tennis on Campus president, senior Samee Stanich, wrote to the United States Tennis Association explaining why her team should be given a bid for the national championship tournament, she mentioned those values.
“I submitted an essay (about) the team values, that we are all great friends and we look at the team as a family,” she said. “I’ve always looked at tennis, and for a lot of us, it has been that outlet that has a cool group of people.”
This sense of togetherness cinched the team a spot at next weekend’s national tournament, which will be held in Cary, N.C., she said.
OU’s team plays for the Midwest region of USTA club tennis, and recently competed in the regional tournament. They came in ninth place out of 32 teams, and were competing against familiar foes such as Miami University, Ohio State, Akron and Bowling Green State University.
More importantly, they were named the club team of the year, which also helped to win placement in the national tourney, where they will be up against 63 other teams.
Although OU’s Tennis on Campus receives a small amount of money from the university, most of the funds used to travel and play come straight out of the players’ pockets, and is often supplemented by various fundraising activities, Stanich said.
Budget cuts may be to blame for the lack of school support, but despite this, Tennis on Campus member say they’re not discouraged.
“It’s hard to see money being poured into other students’ programs,” she said. “(It’s) not just club tennis; I know club ultimate Frisbee, men’s club soccer, they get overlooked. Club sports does the best they can.”
Tennis on Campus is also involved with supporting Athens through a number of community service projects, she said.
In Cary, they will start play on April 7, probably playing 4 to 5 matches each day, she said.
“We have a women’s singles, men’s singles, women’s doubles, men’s doubles and mixed (sex) doubles,” she said. “You only play on set six games, and you keep score by accumulating games.”
This means that scores are not made on an individual basis.
“For me, that’s really different from how other college tennis is played, or high-school tennis,” she said. “You play by match, and if you win your match that’s one point. It’s very team oriented.”
Also, playing the mixed match, which pits male and female players against each other, adds some variety to the sport, she said.
“That’s really fun. Playing with guys, at least for me, is very different. It’s fun,” she said. “It just takes the stress off it. It’s competitive. We do play competitively but at the end of they day we are just there to play tennis.”
And playing tennis is exactly what the team plans to do.
Nine students will be attending the tournament, said team member Rob Schmidt, an OU junior.
For Schmidt this trip is a homecoming of sorts. Before attending OU, he played for Methodist University in N.C., and he used to play at the courts in Cary, where this year’s tournament is being held.
Schmidt even studied management of the sport as part of his major. This left him feeling burned out by the game, he said, so the Lancaster native transferred and moved to Athens.
At first, he was not planning on joining Tennis on Campus, but he was sucked in as soon as he met his teammates, he said.
“I think we have more fun than anyone else,” he said.
For Haley Belek, who is attending the tournament despite graduating last quarter, club tennis is both more fun and laid back than its varsity counterpart.
She said she expects the competition at the tournament to be tough.
“I’m excited to go. I don’t really have a ton of expectations; the competition is tough at nationals and granted, we are a strong team,” she said. “We are competitive, and we can keep up with the best team.”
