Volume 143, Issue #5
TENNIS TEAM OPTIMISTIC DESPITE RECENT STRUGGLES
Winning in tennis requires players to have both mental and physical endurance, and the City College women’s tennis team has a full measure of both. Head coach Cassandra Cunningham has coached the team since 2004. Her 2006 team won the Coast Conference championships and placed second in the 2005 tournament. Each team qualified for the NorCal Team Tennis Tournament. After these matches, the team’s top-seeded doubles and singles players advanced to the state championship. This year’s team has two returning players from last year’s championship team: junior Lupe Cortes and sophomore Maureen Olivar. Cunningham recognized Cortes as the team’s top singles player and Olivar nearly equally impressive. Together they are the number one doubles combination. Cunningham is reassured by the strength of all six players on the team, even though they have defeated only one team tournament. “To the team’s credit, they are working very hard and learning how to compete,” Cunningham said. “That’s what makes it so enjoyable.” Cortes, who also attends San Francisco State University, has been playing tennis since she was eight years old. Since SFSU doesn’t have a tennis program, she sat out a year before joining the Rams in 2006. “My biggest challenge was getting back into competition mode and being able to focus right away,” Cortes said. “I have to get my mind in the game.” A turning point came when she played against the number one seed at Monterey Peninsula College. Despite losing this match, Cortes feels she rose to the challenge and took her game to the next level. “Before [playing at Monterey], I didn’t have a full-on belief I could do it,” Cortes said. “With the help of my coach, I pushed myself to the next limit and I stepped it up.” Cunningham will use the same strategy of previous seasons to get this team to the postseason, encouraging players to maintain good body treatment and a competitive edge that will be vital to the Rams’ success. “You’re not going against the clock,” Cunningham said. “A match can last 45 minutes or three hours. You have to be ready for both.” Olivar, who has been playing tennis for 10 years, feels her strength comes from the support Cunningham and her teammates provide. With four first year players, Olivar remains optimistic, aware of the improvements necessary to win matches. “I think we have improved so much since the season started,” Olivar said. “And I tell the other players not to put ourselves down and that we are getting better.” Coach Cunningham is also optimistic about the team's future. “The more experience the team has in competing and if they continue to work hard, they will peak at the right time,” Cunningham said. e-mail: photoeditor@theguardsman.com
When the NBA was founded in 1946 there was not a single black player on the court. More than half a century later black players comprise 80 percent of the league, and black players have been making vital contributions to the sport for as long as one cares to remember. On March 13, veteran sports writer Ron Thomas came to City College with his Pulitzer prize nominated book, entitled “They Cleared The Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers” the first book written about the experience of those players. The author gave two lectures that day, the first held in the Rosenberg Library, addressing students in the Physical Education 13 class Sports and Society, and the second to journalism students in bungalow 214 at the Ocean Campus. Thomas was a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1978 when the paper ran an article about Chuck Cooper, the first black player drafted by an NBA team. Practically born a sports fan, Thomas could not remember ever reading anything about Cooper’s experience. The article changed the course of Thomas’ writing career, and eventually inspired him to write his first book. The history of the NBA’s integrations depended on the dedication and sacrifice of six unsung heroes of to the game who bravely broke the color barrier. In 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson became the first black major league baseball player, Chuck Cooper, Earl Lloyd, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, Hank Dezonie, Don Barksdale and Davage Minor became the first black NBA players. Thomas recalled the first awkward days of integration with the steady blow-by-blow breakdown of a sportswriter and the rigor of a historian. Holding a folder several inches thick for his audience of athletes, trainers and sports writers to see, Thomas said, “This is how much I dug up on Stokes for five pages.” The idea of writing an article on Cooper’s experience would remain on Thomas’s to do list for years, until one day in 1984 when he heard that Cooper had died. “My first reaction was regret that I hadn’t interviewed him before he died,” Thomas said. “My second reaction was ‘I’d better get started on this story. These players might not be alive much longer.” Thomas began a journey he called “the ultimate connect the dots pursuit.” While covering the Golden State Warriors on the road between 1984-87, Thomas conducted interviews with the NBA’s surviving black pioneers and the people who associated with them, collecting every piece of writing published about the players. Thomas’s research first culminated in an 11-part article run in the San Francisco Chronicle over a three-day period, which explained that the NBA had had three “first” black players, depending on how you defined the term. Chuck Cooper had been the first black player to be drafted, while Earl Lloyd was the first black player to participate in a game. Harold Hunter was the first black player to sign a contract. e-mail: a_e@theguardsman.com |
