MARLENE KARAS/VIEWRobin Pritchard practices her forehand on the courts at Club Sport Green Valley. Club Sport?s women?s adult team will participate in an upcoming sectional tournament in Utah.
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They are among the top tennis players in the Las Vegas Valley. They train hard, all the time, competing and getting better at Club Sport Green Valley. They make sacrifices to travel out of town to compete, without sponsorship, and they usually win.
And when they step off the court, they go back to their jobs, families and children.
The 12 local women who make up the Club Sport Green Valley tennis team recently wrapped up the local championship in the USTA adult ladies 4.5 league. In a few weeks, the team will be traveling to Salt Lake City to compete in sectionals.
If the group can continue its winning ways, it could be moving on to the nationals in September in Arizona. National competition would be nothing new to many members of the team, as the squad won a national championship in 2003. They're hoping to get another shot at a title this year.
"Winning in 2003 was a complete surprise," said team captain Christy Leggett, who had just joined the Club Sport squad four years ago when it won a championship. "To win at the local level is one thing. We've been playing together for a few years now, and when I joined, when Dawn Farber was captain, since then we've been winning locally. But at sectionals, you're playing against teams from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana, so its huge. The competition is so good."
And it only gets better at nationals.
"There, you're playing against teams from all over -- Florida, New York, Hawaii. It's the best of the best in the U.S.," Leggett said.
But there's a reason the local team is feeling confident heading into sectionals. The women went 6-0 in the local playoffs en route to earning the right to represent Nevada in Salt Lake City, leading Leggett to claim that this team is as good as it has been since 2003.
Besides Leggett and Farber, the squad includes Robin Pritchard, Sandy Yanko, Stacey Heroy, Nina Pililaau, Nicole Woywood, Rainee Alexander, Jessie Humphries, Carri Geer-Thevenot, Jayne Bishop and Kathleen Janssen.
"All these ladies have played competitively as juniors, some played in college and were nationally ranked," said Leggett, who had quit tennis at the age of 19 until Farber convinced her to get back on the court four years ago. "We play and practice and train at Club Sport, we go through physical therapy, and we work a lot with our coach Kevin Bradley, who is a teaching pro in Southern Highlands."
The women on the team have to balance their tennis commitments with jobs and families, and most have children.
Club Sport members will depart for Utah on Aug. 16 for three days of competition, playing two singles and three doubles matches each day.
"We all work hard every year for this, and it's tough at this time because we're traveling a lot," Leggett said. "We come home from Utah and hopefully turn right back around to go play at nationals, so it's hard to do everything sometimes. But it's a great experience."
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