Yukon’s Canada Summer Games tennis pair ready for P.E.I.

One point at a time is the approach Ryan Lane and Kieran Halliday will take at this year's Canada Summer Games.

One point at a time is the approach Ryan Lane and Kieran Halliday will take at this year’s Canada Summer Games.

The two Yukon tennis players have made tremendous strides since being selected to the team back in 2008. Months of hard work and preparation will be tested against the country’s top juniors during Week One competition in Charlottetown, P.E.I., which begins Saturday.

“Both of them have been improving and they both are making an effort to play the tournaments now, which is a huge part of competing at the Canada Games,” said the boy’s Canada Games tennis coach Gerry Macken. “They can’t be just taking lessons and learning strokes, they have to get the game experience, the match experience.”

The two have also had their fair share of success while getting some match experience this year.

Earlier in the summer, Halliday, who arrived in Charlottetown a week early to prepare for the Games, posted two second place doubles showings in a pair of B.C. tournaments. Lane, meanwhile, finished as the top junior at both this year’s Yukon Championships and Capital Cup tournament.

Before leaving for P.E.I. this morning, Lane had one final practice Thursday at the Mt. McIntyre tennis courts.

Macken said he expects the toughest competition at the Games to come from B.C., Quebec and Ontario.

“There is really a limited chance to beat those guys, if you are a realist” he said about the players from the three provinces. “These guys are playing 15, 20 tournaments a year and they are training 15 hours a week. It’s really hard to keep up with those guys with the facilities we have up here, but anything can happen.

You always have to keep an open door and you have to keep fighting for every single point and then things turn around sometimes.”

He said the matches against the other provinces should play out a little better.

“Even if we don’t win I think there is a really good chance to get some very good competition and feel good about the whole thing,” Macken said.

As a result of Macken residing in B.C., Tennis Yukon’s head coach Jan Polivka has done the bulk of the training for the territory’s two tennis representatives at the Summer Games. Most of the work has been focussed on building some patterns with technical aspects, such as forehands, backhands and the serves.

Macken said the service game is the biggest technical area that they devoted time towards and included a drill that required the player to place the ball into the four zones in the two two boxes.

A player had to hit the same zone twice before moving on and Macken said Lane nearly perfected it, going 10-for-8. 

“I wanted these guys having a little more confidence and ability to place the ball and own the direction of the ball, which is coming now,” he said. “Getting the four zones down in 10 balls, that’s pretty noteworthy.”

On top of that, Lane and Halliday have learned about how to prepare for a match, methods to be able to process the match as it’s going and techniques on how to re-energize and re-motivate themselves.

This will be Lane’s first time representing the Yukon in tennis at the Canada Summer Games. The 16-year-old said one of his goals is to win a match and feels like he is prepared heading into the competition.

He said taking on some of the adult players at the past two tournaments has been a big help.

“I’ve been playing guys who were better than me my whole time playing tennis,” Lane said. “I guess that helped my game because then I had to raise the bar.”