Field of Dreams
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| Whitaker Tennis Facility, University of Texas at Austin. |
"If you build it...they will come," a voice says in the 1989 Academy Award-nominated movie Field of Dreams.
Perhaps that same voice spoke 10 years later, when the USTA formed a partnership with the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA) and the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) to grow tennis in the college market. A few ideas were tossed around regarding the best way to make an impact, and one idea that stuck was the formation of the USTA National Campus Championship. At the time, NIRSA already had two sport club championships (volleyball and soccer), and the tought was to build a tennis championship using the volleyball and soccer model.
The first event was held in 2000, after only six weeks of planning, at the University of Texas at Austin. Ten teams, with 89 participants, took part in the championship. Six years later, the tournament is returning to its birthplace - on April 20-22 - and will feature 64 teams and nearly 500 participants. Thirty-three of these teams will earn automatic bids into the tournament through their respective USTA Campus Championship - Section Event.
For more information on this year's event, which will be held at the Whitaker Tennis Facility at the University of Texas at Austin, please contact Valerie McCutchan at NIRSA: valerie@nirsa.org or (541) 766-8211.
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