Juneau defends tennis title with victory over Whitehorse

With both pride and a trophy on the line, it was a close battle between Whitehorse and Juneau this past weekend at the Capital Cup tennis tournament.

With both pride and a trophy on the line, it was a close battle between Whitehorse and Juneau this past weekend at the Capital Cup tennis tournament.
In the end, Juneau was able to defend its previous Capital Cup title, which was last awarded in 2000. The final score on Sunday was 204 for Juneau and 173 for Whitehorse.
“It’s a great event to have been revitalized,“ said Mona Yarnall, who helped organize the team from Juneau.

“What I appreciate most is just re-establishing the connection to the Whitehorse tennis community as they are a wonderful group of players and we just felt so welcomed. So winning the cup is one thing, but really it’s more about re-establishing our relationship with our sister city and the players of Whitehorse.“
The Capital Cup competition was first held in 1983, but the event has only been hosted on six occasions since, including this past weekend’s tournament. In the first competition, Whitehorse and Juneau tied.
However since its inaugural year, Juneau has taken the trophy four of the remaining five times. The Capital Cup may be held again this winter in Juneau’s indoor court facility.
This year’s Juneau contingent was made up of 10 players, while Whitehorse had nearly 20 players. There were also two players from Haines Junction. The tournament was open to all players of all skill levels.
The competition was held at the Mount McIntyre courts and included men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles as well a mixed doubles.
Additionally, four junior players attended the tournament and competed in a separate round robin division. All of the junior players also competed in the adult draw as well.
Due to the high number of games that needed to be played in a three-day time period, the tournament used a pro-set format. Matches at the competition were played as the first to nine games, with a tiebreaker at 8-8.
Typically tournaments at this level of play are best two out of three sets, but because of the time restrictions matches before the finals were limited to roughly an hour.

Winners in all of the final matches were determined with the best two out of three format.
Scoring for the winning city at the Capital Cup was determined only in the matches that a player from Whitehorse competed against a member of the Juneau team.
Each game that was won during one of those matches counted as one point towards the team’s total. This way even if a player lost a match, he or she could still contribute to the overall team score.
Despite Whitehorse not winning the cup, there were still a number of individual and team highlights for Yukoners at the tournament.
These highlights included an all-Whitehorse final in the men’s singles category, which was won by Jan Polivka. Polivka defeated Kyle Marchuk in what was an extremely close three set final. The score in the match was 6-0, 0-6, 7-6.
The Capital Cup was put on by the Tennis Yukon Association, which Marchuk is a member of. Other key figures in the resurrection of the event were Tennis Yukon president Stacy Lewis and vice president Leighann Chalykoff.
Marchuk said this was Lewis’ idea to resume the Capital Cup.
“It has always been a popular tournament,“ he said.

“It gives our players an opportunity to play against new players, and gives the junior players a chance to see the level of competition from other cities.“
Marchuk said despite not winning the Capital Cup, he was pleased with how Whitehorse did at the tournament.
“It would have been nice to see ‘Whitehorse’ engraved on the cup, and even though Juneau gets the honour this year, Whitehorse was not far behind,“ he said.

“For a city that only has access to tennis courts four to five months of the year, we did extremely well.“ 
Juneau claimed top spot in the women’s singles event, which was won by Yarnall over Chalykoff. The score in the match was 6-4, 6-1.
Yarnall, who has lived in Juneau for 17 years, said she was impressed with the play of the Whitehorse team at the tournament.
“I would say the playing levels are very comparable,“ she said.

“Somebody actually asked me if I was surprised about the high level of play from Whitehorse and I was not at all surprised.

I was expecting us to be fairly even and everybody was very pleased with the level of play.“
She said there are a lot of benefits to developing a relationship between Juneau and Whitehorse.
“It’s just nice to hopefully create a long running relationship with Whitehorse and the two tennis communities,“ Yarnall said.

“We are both growing in our tennis numbers and it’s just nice to be able to have an opportunity to share it with our Canadian friends.“
Chalykoff said it was great to have Juneau at the competition.
“They’re fantastic players and fantastic people,“ she said. “We look forward to going to Juneau in the future or having them back for a rematch. We have to bring that cup back to Whitehorse.“
She said she wasn’t surprised by how talented the players from Juneau were.
“I knew they had an established tennis program and they have an indoor facility, so I was expecting some stiff competition and that’s what we got.“
In the men’s doubles finals, Jan and Marchuk finished in the top spot with a win over Whitehorse’s Justin Halowaty and Van Pham
In the mixed doubles draw, Warnall and Alavini Latea won over Jerry Wald and Merissa Johnson by a score of 6-4, 5-7, 6-1.
It was another battle of Whitehorse in the women’s doubles final as Tara Marchuk and Rachel Drummond went on to win over Johnson and Laurie Drummond 6-3, 6-1.
One of the key Juneau performances at the competition came from the team’s youngest players in the junior category. 

Wesley Bowman won an incredible 27 points in the category, going 3-0 to finish in first place.