The Red and Black

Issue date: 5/1/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: LINDY DUGGER The University coed club tennis team placed sixth in the nation at the United States Tennis Association National Campus Championships.

The University of Georgia's coed club tennis team placed sixth in the nation this weekend at the USTA National Campus Championship.

The Bulldogs were one of 64 teams from around the United States competing and were pleased with the team's results.

"We went in knowing what our expectations were," team captain Jason Burkett said. "Our goal was to finish around the top five in the country."

The team started off the weekend by beating Harvard, the University of Delaware and Drake University.

This sent the Dogs to the gold bracket, which contained the top 16 teams in the country. The team lost to Virginia in the first game of the championship bracket.

"The competition was extremely good," said Burkett, a senior from Alpharetta. "We got some bad luck when we made it to the gold bracket, because we were matched up with the No. 2 team in the country, the University of Virginia."

After losing to the Cavaliers in the first round, the Bulldogs rallied back to beat the University of Southern California by a big margin and then went on to beat in-state rival Georgia Tech in the next match.

The team then played Texas for fifth place but lost the match.

"We still think we should have played better versus Texas in the finals," Burkett said.

"But we weren't as hyped up as we were against our rival Tech in the match before."

All competing teams played by the World Team Tennis rules, which were co-founded by tennis legend Billie Jean King, who was not at the event. Burkett said the rules had their pros and cons and does not know if they need to be used in the future.

"I liked the format in the fact that it keeps all the matches quick, and you truly rely on every match and every game. I don't like how you're allowed to substitute players in whenever you want to. This takes away the depth of your team, and we had a very strong, deep roster" said Burkett.

A highlight of the weekend came at the banquet when they met Wayne Brian, coach of the best doubles team in the world.

Burkett savored the weekend.

"I really enjoyed it," said Burkett. "It allowed me to play at the college level, play against some solid schools and have some tough matches."

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