Tri-Valley Tennis Club Makes Nationals

Press release from the Dougherty Valley Tennis Club:

Sometime in 2017, a few friends formed a group to play tennis after work, as a form of exercise to keep them fit. They played on public courts. Most practice matches were at Dougherty Valley High School (DVHS) in San Ramon, California. After playing for a year, they were introduced to USTA Adult leagues and decided to form a DVTC (Dougherty Valley Tennis Club) team. The 12 players, all of whom were self-taught and never coached professionally, were of different skill levels. This was their first league tournament with a total of 11 teams competing in the local league, many of whom came from clubs with excellent facilities. During the local league season they emerged as the third team in standings and qualified for the playoffs. They won the playoffs and played at the District championships in Sacramento. They couldn’t win matches at the Districts and failed to go further.

The team continued to play league matches at the 3.5 level and although they always won their local flights, they could never progress beyond the District championships.

The team grew through their extended friends who were also competitive and dedicated to improving their tennis game. During the Covid-19 pandemic period, there were limited other social activities, so the players practiced hard and prepared to play the next USTA league by organizing internal tournaments.

When the USTA leagues restarted in 2021, the DVTC team performed really well and ranked number one in the local flights. Armed with experience from prior leagues, the team employed effective strategies to win the playoffs and qualified to go to the Sectional championships, which were held between 9/10 and 9/12 in Roseville, CA in extreme temperatures of greater than 100F. This team had no prior experience of playing at the Sectionals, but they were determined and prepared to fight hard. There were 17 teams divided into four groups. The team had to win three round-robin matches to progress to the semi-finals. All the players and the Captain had a positive mind-set to fight hard and take one match at a time to qualify for the finals. The team came up with tactical decisions, analyzing each opponent team's strength/weakness by looking at their past results. The players executed their plans to perfection to take down two tough opponent teams in the finals. This was a huge achievement for the DVTC team to become Northern California champions!

The team represented Northern California at the USTA Nationals Championships which were held from 10/15 through 10/17 in Oklahoma City. The team won all four matches in the qualifying rounds to qualify for the finals. They ranked 2nd out of the 16 teams that competed at Nationals. The team failed to win their semi-final match, but won the playoff match for 3rd and 4th place. They won the award for being the 3rd best team in the USA at their level!

Only the top 2% of players who compete in USTA leagues progress to the Nationals. To be ranked 3rd amongst this elite population was a dream come true. To do this with no team manager, proper coaching or dedicated home court facilities is an amazing achievement.

The DVTC team members that made it to the 2021 USTA 3.5 40+ National Championship matches are: Giridharan Anandan, Rohit Chhabra, Armaan Hyder, Deepak Jain, Suresh Kadiyala, Bahurudeen Mohamed, Muthubatcha Purushothaman, Arun Raghupathy, Punyanjan Sen, Vinayak Shenoi, Praveen Subramanian and Venkata Vadrevu.

Here is a quote from the captain Suresh Kadiyala - “It is an honor and privilege to serve as a captain for this team. It is a great team with abundant talent and passion to play good tennis. The team had confidence in all my decisions which helped us to get to the Nationals”.

Sporting achievements like this in your 40s and 50s shows that age is not a barrier if you are dedicated and passionate about your goals. The team is now looking forward to competing at the next level next season and dreams of making it to the USTA Nationals again soon!

This press release was produced by the Dougherty Valley Tennis Club. The views expressed here are the author's own.