Senior 65 men's 4.0 team headed to nationals

Mark Levy was hoping that his men's 4.0 team would play as well at the USTA Southern sectionals held in Dothan Dec. 4-6 as they had in Savannah in the state tournament.

They did.

The senior 65 team won the 4.0 level Southern sectional title in Dothan and will now travel to Surprise, Ariz., to play in the National 65 championships to be held April 1-3, 2016. They are the second Columbus team to qualify for the national tournament this year, with Christie Bates' team winning the 9.0 mixed title earlier.

Besides Levy, three other teams from the area, Nancy Scott's 4.0 team Sidney Crews 3.0 men's team and Dave Thomson's men's 3.5 team also competed in the tournament but none of those three made the finals.

"I think it means more to our team that at this age we are able to play competitive tennis and play well," said Levy after the victory. "Our team played very well and lost only four sets the entire way."

In their division, the Georgia champions won all four of their matches 3-0 and only lost one set to clinch their berth in the finals. They would meet the Alabama champions who were also 4-0 in their group.

"Alabama had a good team top to bottom and it was a very good final match," said Levy. "Our No. 1 team was first off the court and lost in a super-tiebreaker, 12-10 but our No. 2 doubles won their match to make it 1-1."

"That left me and my partner in the third and deciding set," Levy went on to say." We lost the first set but came back and won the second set 6-4 to force another super tiebreaker and won it 10-3. We just said we would not make mistakes and play hard."

Members of the championship team from Columbus were Scott, Ron Hale and Levy. Kim Glass was on the roster but was unable to play due to an injury. Other members of the team were Howard Rugaber, Jimmy Parker, Joe Simon and Dick Anderson all from the St. Simons area.

"I knew all those guys and we could not get a full local team were at 65's and they could not there so we combined teams and played in Savannah and just kept on going," Levy said.

This story was originally published December 13, 2015 at 11:34 PM with the headline "Senior 65 men's 4.0 team headed to nationals ."