With COVID-19 the CWU tennis club has gone through some changes this year. Gone are the trips to other schools to compete in tournaments, and in their place are practices on CWU tennis courts to sharpen their skills.

That will change on May 21-22, when the tennis club will be hosting its own tournament for club members.

There will be five different tournaments going on that weekend. A men’s and women’s doubles and singles tournament, as well as mixed doubles. 

When we last heard from the club back in November, they were still practicing in hopes that they would be able to compete later in the year. 

Jordyn Fassett, a junior and current vice-president of the club, said that some things have changed since then.

“Since (November) we’ve been able to use our facility,” Fassett said. “We’ve been able to play outside with our masks on. It’s been a lot of fun, we’ve had new officers, we had new games introduced and everybody seems to have a good time.”

Fassett said the club has a little bit of an overflow of funding due to the lack of travel that they are accustomed to during the school year. They have spent that extra money on t-shirts and sweatshirts for the seniors who are graduating this quarter.

Fassett said that the lack of traveling to other schools forced the club to come up with other ways to bond together.

“The core group of us who do (travel) have had to find other ways to connect and bond,” Fassett said. “We’ve had a couple get togethers, safely of course, it’s been really fun. I think people really value the time we have up here now. A lot of people do show up and show up consistently.”

Practice coordinator Danny DeBock said that the main goal for this time is to help those in the club improve their skills.

“Looking back on what we said, my mission was always to improve and be ready for the tournaments,” DeBock said. “And that’s been the case. We’ve seen a lot of improvement from a lot of players. One of the main advantages that I’ve seen through this year is how a few of us have become tactically smarter in our tennis game.”

DeBock said he’s been seeing a lot of players moving from just trying to get the ball over the net to continue a rally, to trying to actually win the point. 

DeBock said the reason why they are putting the tournament on is to get the competitive edge that the club has not yet experienced this year.

“We haven’t had any competitive side that we could really exude except within practices itself,” DeBock said. “You can only do so much during practice, there hasn’t been much of a chance to compete.”

DeBock said that the tournament will be a nice way to prepare for next year when they can hopefully travel to other schools again and participate in tournaments there. 

“Are we going to travel next year? I can’t guarantee anything,” DeBock said. “But I would say this things are a lot more open than they were this year compared to last spring … in hindsight while looking at all of this I would say the odds are in our favor of traveling next year.”