Note: This event has been canceled.
MOUNT VERNON – The Northeast Ohio Tennis Association Mount Vernon Fall Grand Slam takes place at Memorial Park and Mount Vernon Nazarene University on Saturday morning and afternoon.
This is the first time the area has hosted a team grand slam event in the fall.
“The problem with (Mount Vernon) being in Northeast Ohio is that all of the activities that they plan are by Canton or Akron or Cleveland or Mentor,” event organizer and Mount Vernon High School girls tennis coach Steve Tier said. “It’s quite a ways to get up there. So we haven’t been able to participate in those kinds of things simply because of the logistics.”
The NEOTA was looking to put on events in the southern part of the district.
“Steve has done an amazing job down there building a tennis program,” Rebecca Hancart, tennis service representative for Northeastern Ohio, told the Mount Vernon News. “We run these grand slam events up in Akron and (the) Chagrin Falls area, but we know that that’s a long haul. There are lot of people down in Mount Vernon and in the Kokosing Valley area— people from Wooster and from Canton and it’s close enough to Columbus that if people wanted to travel from Columbus and take part, they could.”
Mount Vernon became an ideal site because of Memorial Park and MVNU after the coronavirus pandemic, Hancart said.
“We were looking for an outdoor (facility) that we could still use,” she told the News. “We know that there’s a possibility of rain and it’s going to be a little chillier. But people are still a little hesitant to going inside. So we just wanted to give them one more opportunity to play outside before the weather really turned to frost.” The rain-date for the event is Sunday.
The event features team play in four different age groups: 10-under, 12-under, 14-under and 18-under. The 10-under is for new players and the other age groups are for players at an intermediate level.
Players must be registered with the United States Tennis Association (which is free) and have a Junior National Tennis Rating of 3.44 or below. Players have until 11:59 p.m. on Thursday to register at northeasternohiotennisassociation.formstack.com/forms/mount_vernon_grand_slam.
In the 10-under group, there is space for six gender-neutral teams. Matches will take place at Memorial Park from 9 a.m. to noon.
There are eight teams scheduled in the 12-under group, and play will be from 1-4 p.m. at Memorial Park.
The 14-under group will feature eight teams playing from 9 a.m. until noon at Mount Vernon Nazarene University; and the 18-under group will follow from 1-4 p.m., also with space for eight teams.
Teams of two will play one doubles match and one singles match for each player.
“They (made) it really easy for people to get involved by having two-person teams,” Tier said. “You could even sign up by yourself and they will give you someone to play with. The most important thing with this is to get kids out (to) play.”
Each match is a four-game set with no advantage scoring and a 12-point tiebreaker if the match is tied at three games apiece. Matches will be played to completion.
The overall match-winner is determined by the number of games won by each team. If tied, a 12-point tiebreaker will be played by the doubles team.
It will be a nice postscript for Tier and his high school program, who play in a sectional at Reynoldsburg on Thursday.
“For the girls, I think it might be a fun way to wrap up their season if they want to play because they can pick who they play with,” Tier said. “For the boys, I hope it gets them back out.”
