Some Missouri high schoolers lost their final season. Now they have one more tourney
When Blue Springs South High School’s Sean Nguyen learned his senior season of tennis would be cut short because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was heartbroken.
“I wanted one last year to play with my team, I wanted a senior night, I wanted to get out on the court one last time before I left for college,” Nguyen said. “I was devastated, but I knew that if I took action, I could get something going for the seniors of the state.”
With the Missouri state tennis championships canceled, Nguyen worked to organize a replacement tournament. Nguyen found a non-profit organization, Forty Love, that has staged tennis tournaments to benefit the homeless and figured he could do something similar here.
He got in contact with Rhonda Kaissi, the United States Tennis Association’s Missouri vice president, and she agreed to be the tournament’s director. Now, something close to the 2020 Missouri High School Boys State Tennis Championships is back on.
The two-day tournament will take place July 31 -Aug. 1 at Columbia’s Cosmo-Bethel Park, with proceeds benefiting Uplift Organization Incorporated, a homeless-outreach program.
Forty Love is helping to organize the event, but Kaissi will be in charge of running the tournament over the two-day period. With the original tournament canceled due to health and safety concerns, the championships will follow USTA COVID-19 safety guidelines in hopes of creating a safe playing environment.
The USTA recommends participants stay six feet apart other players, including doubles partners, and avoid touching their face after touching a tennis ball. They also suggest using feet or racquets to pass balls to opponents instead of picking them up.
Nguyen said two sets of balls will be used and marked at the tournament so that each side only touches their own tennis balls. He added that social-distancing policies will be followed and participants will be asked to bring their own water and towels.
The tournament will feature singles and doubles brackets with 16 entries in each bracket. Entries into the tournament cost $40 and each tennis player who qualified for state last year is eligible.
If an entrants is selected for both the singles and doubles brackets, he or she will have to choose just one in which to compete. Entrants may pair up with a different doubles partner than they had last season as long as two two players attended the same school.
The remaining spots will be divided up among last year’s sectional qualifiers based on universal tennis rating (UTR). The matches will be best two of three sets, with medals awarded to those who finish in the top eight players or teams in each bracket.
There are eight entries so far, but with a month remaining Nguyen expects that number to grow.
Proceeds collected through tournament entry fees, donations and T-shirt sales will be donated to Uplift, an outreach program founded in 1990 that, through donations, feeds and clothes homeless people in Kansas City.
Nguyen hopes to raise $1,500 by hosting the tournament and give fellow seniors some closure as they head into the next stages of their lives.
“If I could, I would, but I can’t give them back their senior year,” Nguyen said. “I’m just trying to give them that silver lining in this pandemic and keep benefiting Uplift Organization.”