Subscribe
Last year's runner-up Ting Lin of AOSR is one of the favorites to take this year's title at the DODEA-Europe tennis championships in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Last year's runner-up Ting Lin of AOSR is one of the favorites to take this year's title at the DODEA-Europe tennis championships in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)

Last year's runner-up Ting Lin of AOSR is one of the favorites to take this year's title at the DODEA-Europe tennis championships in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Last year's runner-up Ting Lin of AOSR is one of the favorites to take this year's title at the DODEA-Europe tennis championships in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)

Vicenza's Kiki Sibilla slams the ball over the net in a doubles match at last year's DODEA-Europe tennis championships. A runner-up in the doubles competition, Sibilla will be competing in the singles when the 2016 event gets under way Thursday in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Vicenza's Kiki Sibilla slams the ball over the net in a doubles match at last year's DODEA-Europe tennis championships. A runner-up in the doubles competition, Sibilla will be competing in the singles when the 2016 event gets under way Thursday in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)

Players use the DODEA-Europe tennis regular season to qualify for the European tournament and to prepare for it.

That first task has been completed for the individual contenders and doubles teams named to the field of the annual championships, set to run Thursday through Saturday at sites around Wiesbaden, Germany.

The latter, however, can never be fully accomplished.

“In Europeans, the player must be prepared to be resilient and focused over a longer period of time,” Kaiserslautern coach Elizabeth Quinn said. “Regular season meets are more immediate...They can put it behind them quickly.”

That escalation - of stakes, effort and the accompanying mental taxation - defines the three-day tournament as much as the heightened level of competition.

To that end, programs have emphasized psychological as well as physical conditioning.

“Players are having to play more in a quicker time span, and they need the endurance to withstand such play,” Naples coach Theresa Burley said. “We have also worked a lot on strategy, focusing on playing smart rather than hard to conserve energy.”

When thorough preparation meets the adrenaline rush of live postseason competition, the results can be remarkable.

“Sometimes it feels like the level of play goes way beyond what we see during the season,” Wiesbaden coach Tom Rooney said. “Players themselves have commented about how surprised they are at the level of even their own play during the tournament.”

For all those tournament-specific nuances, however, the goal of each player in each tournament match remains the same.

“We are there to play well,” Hohenfels coach Loyal Wilson said. “And win every match.”

The regular season might not have fully prepared competitors for the challenges to come, but it has established deserving frontrunners for each of the four championships at stake this week.

The girls singles bracket appears particularly competitive, with a crowded top tier of elite players including Emilie God of International School of Brussels, Kiki Sibilla of Vicenza, Anna Buzzard of Hohenfels, Brittany Brann of Alconbury and Cami Carswell of Ramstein.

Returning runner-up Ting Lin of American Overseas School of Rome is a favorite to claim the boys title. But two veterans of the 2015 boys double championship match - Felix Sandrup Selvik of winning ISB and Mathias Mingazzini of runner-up Marymount - could prevent his coronation. Kaiserslautern’s Henri Butler, Stuttgart’s Bradley Russell, Wiesbaden’s Keegan Harrison and Florence’s Francesco Londono lurk as dark-horse threats.

The competition is even thicker in the doubles ranks. ISB holds a No.1 pool seed in both brackets, including boys Victor de La Faille and Yuki Takeuchi and girls Hortense L’Hostis and Brune Luciat-Labry; Stuttgart boys Mitchell Corley and Sean Bushong and Ramstein girls Amanda Daly and Sophie Tomatz rank among ISB’s top challengers.

broome.gregory@stripes.com

Twitter: @broomestripes

Sign Up for Daily Headlines

Sign up to receive a daily email of today's top military news stories from Stars and Stripes and top news outlets from around the world.

Sign Up Now