New Castle A Flight Tennis Team Takes County Championship Again!
Front, left to right: Emily Gilbert and Tracie Cronin; standing, left to right: Emily Haft Bloom, Stacey Smith Reynolds, Diane Bernstein, Captain Kathy Berkowitz, Chris Rigney and Tory Patterson; missing: Joan Simon and Margo Smith
June 29, 2012
by Emily Haft Bloom
On Tuesday, June 25th under a cloudy sky, the New Castle Women’s A flight tennis team met longtime rivals from Scarsdale at Twin Oaks for the county championship match. Earning home court advantage for both championship matches thanks to its first place, undefeated finish after 8 regular season matches, New Castle prevailed last week in the semi-finals against Cortlandt and again took home the big trophy this week for the 5th time in 6 years.
In a deja vu moment from last year, results from the four doubles matches were at 2 for Scarsdale and 2 for New Castle and the final match, the only singles match played in this league, had already run over two hours. A third set tie-break was all that stood between New Castle and the title. Stacey Smith Reynolds, a seasoned singles player for New Castle, took charge and prevailed, bringing home the win in a nail-biter that had every spectator and player present watching every strike of the ball.
Kathy Berkowitz led the team for her final season as captain with the assistance of Chris Rigney. Kathy has been captain for 9 years, taking the championship for 6 of those years and fielding a team of 9 players each week from late April to late June for both home and away matches all over the county. This year the team included 22 women: Kathy Berkowitz, Diane Bernstein, Emily Bloom, Caryn Bluestine, Tracie Cronin, Barb Daniel, Jennifer Filardi, Emily Gilbert, Roberta Graves, Sylvia Herzog, Andrea Kaplan, Bonnie Loewenstein, Tory Patterson, Stacey Reynolds, Chris Rigney, Randi Siegel, Joan Simon, Margo Smith, Makiko Togo, Alison Rubin, Jodi Weil and Gabrielle Zilkha.
As the only team in the league without town courts on which to play, we are indebted to Twin Oaks Swim and Tennis Club for hosting the team again this year on their beautiful courts. Also, Aaron Podhurst of the New Castle Department of Recreation provided once again much needed administrative support for the team. Last but not least, Kathy Berkowitz must be acknowledged for her continued commitment to the team and its impressive success.
What level play is this? 4.0, 4.5, ?????
Chappaqua should be proud of them. I would be curious to know if the team will be playing against other counties to compete for NYS Champs.
Most of the New Castle A team members are USTA rated 4.0 and 4.5. Most other Town A team members are 4.0 and 4.5 as well. Most of the towns that participate in the County league have B teams and some have C teams but since New Castle does not have town courts on which to play, and we cannot use Greeley’s courts, we could not possibly field another team for players at the 3.5 and 3.0 level as there would be nowhere for them to practice or play. We are only able to field a team at all because of a long standing (not free) arrangement with Twin Oaks Swim and Tennis Club. All other town teams use town courts for practices and matches and no out-of-pocket expenses are incurred by those team members. Each member of the New Castle Town team pays a portion of the fees paid to Twin Oaks for the use of their courts. Those Twin Oaks courts must have some magical properties as we always seems to succeed when playing on them. We are most grateful that Twin Oaks extends the privilege to us to use their beautifully maintained facilities.
