Area youth had gotten out their tennis racquets and practiced their skills for the first of a series of tennis tournaments Saturday, which was held by the ARC of Butler for special needs youth.
That practice paid off for the Butler Blazers, which placed third in the tournament with 70 points, with the Wichita Aces coming in first with 84 points and Salina Blue Thunder placing second, 76 points.
This is part of an annual series of tournaments.
“It’s a part of a series of five to six different tournaments held between Wichita (which has two), Hutchinson, Salina and Hays,” said Lori Wagner, with the ARC of Butler
All of the teams will travel to the other cities to play in each of the tournaments. Butler’s team will go to all of them except Hays, because of the distance.
“We’ve kind of set our to start off the entire set of tournaments in the summer,” Wagner said.
There were four different levels in the tournament.
“It’s basically a tennis skills tournament,” she explained.
At level four, players are taught to bounce the ball with their hand and racquet, hit the ball over the net and hit it back to somebody.
Level three continues to add more skills and they keep progressing up to level one, which is regular tennis.
Following the tournament, players headed to Trinity United Methodist Church for lunch and an awards ceremony.
Individual results from tournament for the Blazers were:
LEVEL 1 (1-D) 1. Stacey Bertsch, 3. Andy Barclay
LEVEL 3 (3-B) 3. Katie Wagner
LEVEL 4 (4-A) 3. Bryan Stephens; (4-B) 4. Kaitlyn Eads; (4-C) 2. Shawanda Reimshiesel, 3. Miranda Lampton; (4-D) 1. Kay Hutchinson, 3. Robert Stephens; (4-E) 1. Skout Shepard, 3. Jimmy Simkulet; (4-F) 1. Shelly Murray, 3. Dottle White; (4-G) 1. Saphyre DeWitt, 2. Connor Crawford, 3. Angie Campbelll (4-H) 2. Bre Black and Barbara Broomfield; (4-I) 1. Amanda Smith, 2. Sydney Sutton, 3. Susan Ward.
