Kansas State University’s Tennis on Campus team excelled during the 2019 USTA Missouri Valley Fall Invite, pulling a second-place victory after a narrow 22-23 finish behind Iowa State. 

 

The tournament was held Sept. 28-29 at the Plaza Tennis Center in Kansas City, Missouri, and saw sixteen teams from across the section compete for the win.

 

“This Fall Invite is the most successful finish we’ve had in club history,” said Matt Berneking, a senior on the team. “We were very happy to make it to the finals.”

 

Kansas State tied at 22-22 games with Iowa State before going into a tiebreaker. The team agrees that they may have been able to pull ahead of Iowa State if it hadn’t been for the exhaustion they were facing. 

 

“They had around eight players while we only had four, so they played about half as many matches as we all did,” Berneking said. ADVERTISEMENT “We all felt that, had we played them earlier in the day, we could have held on and won.”

 

Despite their narrow miss in the tiebreaker, Kansas State is looking forward to their upcoming tournaments. They will compete in several events during the winter months as they prepare for the sectional tournament in March.

 

“We qualified for nationals for the first time last year, so we want to qualify again this year,” Berneking said.

 

Tennis on Campus provides an opportunity for college students to play on a competitive team with other members of their university. Kansas State’s program sees about 60 members for weekly practices. 

 

“The best part of the program is the group of people you get to meet,” Berneking said. “A lot of my closest friends are in the club, so it makes competing with them very enjoyable.”

Find out more about Tennis on Campus and other ways to get involved in the game at your university.