The Florida A&M men’s tennis team was triumphant at the Clayton County HBCU National Tennis Championship in Atlanta.
The win set the standard for the Rattlers, as this was their first tournament of the season. FAMU has won the title five of the 11 years the championship has existed.
Head coach Carl Goodman said he is proud of the team and wants the school to know about the men’s accomplishment.
“We are the National Tennis champs of every historically black College and University for the 5th year in a row,” Goodman said. “That’s big.”
The tournaments consist of singles and doubles flights. For singles: Levan Clark lost in the A flight finals. Takura Happy won the B Flight and Tamuera Asafu-adjaye won the C flight.
FAMU received wins in every double match. Takura Happy and Salis Kante won the double A flight. Levan Clark and Chidi Gabriel brought home the B flight.
There were a total of 13 schools that took part in the tournament.
Although the team is still young, they have handled some of the top named schools in tennis.
“Our biggest competitor this past weekend was Xavier University, who will be top 10 in their division and the majority of the finals were between them and us,” Goodman said. “We had a great win, and we competed with one of the top 10 schools in the country. And we ended up winning.”
Junior tennis player Chidi Gabriel is happy with the team’s performance this weekend, but knows there is always room for improvement.
“I felt that we played a pretty good game, but we could have played even better. We have to keep holding our composure on the court because it’s tough enough just playing tennis,” Gabriel said.
The team will spend practice time running this week before a match up against the Florida State Seminoles in their Fall Invitational on Friday.