Four BCWSA Athletes Named to the 2017 World Team Cup in Wheelchair Tennis

Four BCWSA Athletes Named to the 2017 World Team Cup in Wheelchair Tennis
massive-dev | March 1, 2017

Congratulations to Thomas Bourassa, Thomas Venos, Sarah Hunter and Mika Ishikawa! They were all selected to represent Canada at the 2017 BNP Paribas World Team Cup, which will held from May 1-7 in Alghero, Italy. Sarah and Mika will compete in the quad divsion, while Thomas and Tomas will compete with Ontario’s Puisand Lai in the junior division.

We’re proud of all of our athletes, but we’re especially thrilled about Team T(h)omas, since this is the first time in our history that we’ve sent junior athletes to the World Cup Team. It’s an incredible accomplishment for these two young men, who have only been competing seriously together for the past few years.

Team T(h)omas owes much of it success to Steve Manley (and former BCWSA Program Manager Holly Tawse), who started the wheelchair tennis junior program. When Steve and Holly started, B.C. did not have a single junior wheelchair tennis athlete. Today, B.C. is a leader in junior wheelchair tennis and has enough athletes to run a junior wheelchair tennis camp and a weekly drop-in program.

“From myself it’s a dream come true,” said Steve. “When I started working with BCWSA, I had a personal goal to develop a junior program and one day have a junior good enough to compete with the best in the world. To have two juniors go to the World Team Cup is beyond my wildest dreams.”

Congratulations to all of the athletes. We can’t wait to cheer you on!