While the men’s and women’s varsity tennis teams fight for positioning in the upcoming Southeastern Conference tournaments, the LSU club tennis team will spend the next several days playing on a national stage.
Thanks to its second-place finish in the Southern Section Championship in February, the co-ed club team will compete in the United States Tennis Association Tennis On Campus National Championship in Surprise, Ariz., for the second consecutive year.
Last year’s team was the most successful to date, placing 35th out of 64 teams in the club’s first appearance at USTA Nationals. History junior Theo Kennedy said he and his teammates spent last year’s tournament reveling in their hard-earned success.
“[Last year] we were ecstatic to be there and just wanted to celebrate,” Kennedy said. “We did all right last year, but this year we are looking to play well, finish top five in the nation and maybe win it if we can.”
When civil engineering senior Dillon Braud arrived at LSU in 2008, travelling to a tournament was far from reality for the tennis club, which barely had enough members to sustain itself. Wanting to continue playing tennis at a high level, Braud, along with his twin brother Alex and a few other motivated individuals, took over and started building the program into what it is today.
“Each year, we improved as a team and an organization,” Braud said. “We started going to more and more tournaments, getting more members, more volunteer events and more practices. Tryouts this past fall had over 100 people.”
Kennedy said he believes making the club more organized and efficient helped to recruit higher-quality players. One of those players is biology junior Hayley Everett, who was a 5A Louisiana state champion in high school and was a member of the LSU women’s varsity team for two years. Everett said she was uncertain whether she wanted to play tennis anymore, but was won over by the club’s balance of competitiveness and camaraderie.
“It really felt like a family, which was something that I valued while I was with the varsity,” Everett said. “I had heard that they were strong competitors, which is something I still wanted. It just made tennis fun — we compete really hard and want to win, but we have fun and enjoy being around each other.”
Not everyone who tries out can make the team, and those who do may not get many opportunities to compete in tournaments. Kennedy said selecting players to travel is one of the most difficult challenges facing the club officers.
“You like everyone on the team, so it is tough to tell people that they won’t get to go [to tournaments],” Kennedy said. “We only get to take 10 players to nationals, and Dillon and I have been debating for weeks to get the best team we can to give us a chance to win.”
