Kembell Family’s Perseverance Leads to Branson Tournament Offerings
When Cheri Kembell explored potential USTA tournaments for her oldest of three daughters to enter, she noticed her hometown of Branson didn’t appear in search results. So Kembell — whose entire family plus extended family plays and is passionate about the sport of tennis — got to work.
Kembell’s brother put her in contact with Courtney Nesbitt, USTA Missouri Junior Competition Coordinator and frequent tournament director. Nesbitt explained the process of creating USTA junior tournaments and encouraged Kembell to locate a tournament director to lead the charge.
The end result? Within the span of a handful of weeks, Kembell spearheaded the formation of two Branson-based USTA junior tournaments that will take place later this year — a round-robin junior circuit event on April 23 and a Level 7 tournament occurring on June 4.
“We would love to see tennis events grow in the Branson area,” Kembell said. “We have such a great infrastructure in place. It’s a great destination that people visit. We started looking at getting our daughters into USTA tournaments and the different destination options. And thought, ‘OK, these are great. We can take trips to Oklahoma, Kansas City, St. Louis. But wouldn’t it also be really awesome if people from those other cities could come to Branson and participate in a USTA tournament?’”
Cheri’s husband, Sean Kembell, has been an instrumental figure in the Branson tennis scene for years and played a key role in getting the USTA tourneys off the ground. Sean teaches world languages (Spanish) at Branson High School and started the boys’ tennis program at BHS a decade and a half ago. He played tennis at Missouri State University on an athletic scholarship and got Cheri hooked on the sport when they met nearly 20 years ago.
As a mother of three, coach’s wife and full-time professor in computer science at College of the Ozarks, Cheri said she — not to mention her family — is “crazy busy.” She also described herself as “pretty determined.” Upon discovering no USTA junior tournaments existed in Branson, Cheri vowed to change that.
“I want to make this happen,” Cheri said. “I feel really strongly it’s something our community needs and players will support. People will want to come to a tennis tournament in Branson. We love our city that we live in. We know we have a really solid group of people in the community who would come out and watch. Even if they didn’t know someone who was playing — if they heard there’s a USTA tournament coming — they would support the players.”
Cheri calls that network the “Branson Tennis Family.” It is comprised of a mix of 60 community members, parents of children who competed in Sean’s high school program as well as neighbors who play and drive their kids to Cooper Tennis Complex in Springfield to take part in lessons/programming alongside the Kembell girls.
Cheri noted the Branson Tennis Family is very supportive of the Branson High School boys’ and girls’ tennis teams. The group was in Sean’s corner when he guided the Pirates to a fourth-place finish at the MSHSAA Class 2 State Tournament this past spring.
One of Sean’s former four-year players, Josh Bartram, was recently selected and approved as Tournament Director for the two Branson-based junior events. Bartram — who was drawn to tennis in the second grade when he watched his older brother compete for Coach Kembell at Branson High School — will be attending Missouri State University starting this fall.
“Tennis is such a great sport. Being immersed in the sport as much as I can is important to me and to see the regional up-and-coming talent,” Bartram said on why he decided to become TD of the events.
Cheri’s extended family is also a tennis-loving group at the heartbeat of Branson tennis. Sean is an identical twin, and each of his twin brother’s kids play tennis. All of the Kembell family’s nephews and nieces compete in tennis, in fact, with nephew Joseph Coder recently receiving a USTA Missouri Valley Junior Sportsmanship Award. Cheri and Sean’s oldest daughter participated in her first USTA tournament this past December at Cooper.
“Sean and I are committed to raising our family here in Branson,” Cheri said. “We love it. We have tons of friends who play tennis. All we have to do is get the word out over the next year and publicize these tournaments. People are going to come. They’re going to have fun. They’re going to love and enjoy Branson while they’re here. I see this being an annual tradition; I hope it is. I hope my little 4-year-old can play when she is old enough.”
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