It’s July and time for Zonals Championships, a National Level 2 tournament. Each USTA division puts together their top players from each age group to compete for the Team Zonals Championships. Again, the 16s Zonals was held in Salt Lake City, Utah; the tournament took at place Liberty Park and at the University of Utah.
Coach Tom was selected to coach 1 of the 2 teams from USTA Northern California. Gaby was also chosen to represent our USTA division. There were 5 other divisions in the West Zonals Championship: USTA NorCal, SoCal, Inter-mountain, Southwest and Hawaii.
SoCal division has always been a tough contender having won this event multiple times, to say NorCal and Socal are rivalry is an understatement. And, again, that proved to be the case at this Zonals event. Each Team match resulted in just 1 match difference and it came down each individual match, a lot of 3 setters and tie-breakers. It was too close for comfort.
Standing in our way to the trophy was another Socal team; another huddle to cross on Monday Finals.
Our team cheer now became: What we do? We Fight!!!! — What we do? We Fight!!!!
Our players stayed focused through the Finals match, match by match we were in the lead through out. Small lead but just enough to give us another boost of confidence to capture this title for USTA NorCal- a feat that has not been done in close to a decade.
Here it is the 2017 Zonals West 16s Champion Team. Congrats to all players and coaches and remember:
What we do? We Fight!!!!