Kaitlin McCasland returns the ball over the net for the Bunsold Middle School tennis team. The Lady Monarchs will host the Josh Huffman Memorial tournament on Saturday.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Sam Dillon)
The Bunsold Middle School girls tennis program will host the third annual Josh Huffman Memorial doubles tournament.
The event will be held Saturday at the Marysville High School courts.
The tournament is named in memory of Huffman, the Bunsold tennis coach who died after a five-year battle with melanoma cancer in 2017 at the age of 38.
The MHS courts will be open for warm-ups at 8:30 a.m. and the tournament will get under way at 9 a.m.
There will be three divisions of play, which will be termed as first through third doubles.
The Lady Monarchs will host teams from Delaware Dempsey, Dublin Davis, Dublin Karrer and St. Brigid (Dublin).
The tournament will be played in a round-robin format, which according to tournament director Bill Romine, will be ideal.
“It will add only six matches to the total tournament, yet allows each team to play in four matches,” said Romine, who is also the Lady Monarch varsity coach. “The total matches played on our six courts will be 30 in five rounds.”
The tournament featured a double-elimination bracket in previous years.
“With that format, we played 24 total matches and went up to potentially 27,” said Romine.
Each team will have one bye round.
Coaches, who will meet at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, will conduct a blind draw for each division to determine which round a team’s bye will be observed.
Winners will be determined based on the number of matches won, with the tie-breaker being determined by the number of games won.
The third tie-breaker criteria will be the head-to-head result.
A trophy will be awarded to the team with the most match victories with the same tie-breaker criteria.
Medals will be awarded to each member of the top two doubles teams in each division.
Matches will be played as eight game pro-sets with no additional scoring.
A 10-point tie-breaker will be played if matches end tied at 7-7.