Every year, our Southern section organizes a team tournament called the Ozaki Cup. It's a special tournament in which each of the NINE states in the Southern section competes against each other. Each state brings its best three boys and best three girls in each age category. You have to be invited to play this tournament, assuming you are ranked close to the top 3 in the state, and you have to have no suspension points from the past year. Mark was fortunate enough to have been invited to play for the North Carolina team as a B16 member.
The tournament is held in Rome....Georgia. It's about a 7 hour drive from us, pass Atlanta. It's a beautiful place with one inconvenience--the lack of hotel choices. We ended up staying at the tournament hotel, walking distance to downtown, the Courtyard, but not a very cheap place.
This team event is so special for these tennis kids who compete on their own all the time. Here is a picture of them doing the team cheer.
Each state team has four coaches that supervise the kids and coach them even during matches--which is very different from regular tournaments. All the teams are divided into groups, and then all the teams play each other within the group to determine the next bracket.
Comradery is the biggest asset of this competition. These kids absolutely love supporting each other and watch each other's matches. When your team's point is at stake, so many of them come out and watch the last matches still on court. In this picture, everyone was watching Mark and Joseph who were playing a doubles match against South Carolina. Every point matters when rivalry is this close!
Usually, the top three of the Southern states are Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In 2022, North Carolina took the title for the first time in a while. But this year, our B16s team actually did not do as great as they hoped and that cost us the lead.
Here is another picture of the team on the first day when everyone was arriving.
I can't remember the specific order, but I know that at some point North Carolina had to play Arkansas. Mark played doubles with Ryan Corcoran for the first match.
In the evening of the first day, Mark also had to play doubles with the tiniest girl who was actually a back up as we had a very last minute default from a female tennis player who was going to play the number one position! So the director had to scrambled and literally asked a sister of one of the girls to become a last minute sub. Mark was such a good sport about this match! I mean, he knew that they had no chance to beat the other mixed doubles team after looking at their size. But he and this girl did not give up. Mark was SO encouraging and so kind to his partner during the match that her parents did not know how to thank me for raising such a fine young man. Miraculously, they won 4 games and only lost 6:4 as the final score! They had a great time although they lost....
Perhaps because of that, Mark actually received a Sportsmanship Award from our NC coaching team! And a gift card to Smoothie King. It was quite a surprise!!!
One of the evenings, we all had to stay at the courts till 11 pm because somehow we got ourselves into a big pickle against South Carolina and basically a mixed doubles team had to play a 10 point tiebreaker to decide who gets the winning point as we were tied after all the matches from that day. Sadly, our team lost by a fraction and we ended up setting back into the third spot with Georgia leading the pack. Mark, however, won all of his singles matches so he really helped his team (well, at least he didn't hurt them).
Downtown Rome...Georgia. Walking around in the evening to get some dinner.
Joseph and Mark were paired up in doubles and happened to be next to each other after they gave out the frames to remember the tournament.
And here are Mark, Victoria Mann and Cody Benton--they all trained at Cameron's.
Oh, and backtracking a bit...we all arrived for practice on Thursday afternoon to the Rome Tennis Center. I parked and suddenly I saw smoke coming out from one of the cars parked just a few cars away from me. I came out of my car as I saw another parent get out of the car as we heard a loud pop. When I clearly saw the smoke, I got back into my car and reparked further away and dialed 911 as I saw the flames appearing from under the hood of the car.
The dispatcher told me that help is on the way already and should be arriving shortly. And they did. By the time they got there, the front of the car was engulfed in flames! It was scary. They quickly tried to put away the fire, but definitely destroyed the car further in the process.
Most parents stayed out of the way (the kids were practicing on court at that time). The car was completely destroyed...it was someone from TN, if I remember it correctly. Ford Edge--so don't buy that car as something malfunctioned randomly. They safely got their luggage and the cat out of the car, and we all were happy that no one got hurt. Yeah...pretty eventful.
Mark wishes he could play this fun tournament every year! But he probably will only be able to do it in his second year of 16s or 18s. Glad they have this team event for kids to feel like they are a part of something bigger.
Lyana.
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