DMTC Juniors 2022 – The Year of Champions

ICTA Junior League consists of 90 clubs from Pickering to Oakville and from Toronto to King City, the Caledon area. The ICTA junior season extends over a six-week period in the summer. Both DMTC divisional teams, All Stars (U14/U18) and the DMTC Future Stars (U12) finished the 2022 season without a “Fixture” loss to remain undefeated, with four DMTC players taking home the coveted ICTA Megastar Award, and two receiving MVP awards. Our DMTC Future Stars completed the season bringing home the championship at the Sobey’s Centre defeating Cricket Tennis Club in an exciting tiebreaker 10 to 5 after splitting all their sets and games, and our DMTC All Stars U14/U18s received the Finalist award.

DMTC also entered Tennis Rocks, an ICTA-sponsored one-day competition of citywide multi-divisional U18 – U14 junior teams in elimination round-robin play.  DMTC entered the tournament with a skeleton team of two 14-year-old players and three players 12 and under. With temperatures of 31C and humidity, our DMTC team played throughout the entire day, with heart and grit to win each round against much older and experienced competitors, to win the finals in an exciting tiebreaker.  Down 0-3 in the tiebreaker, they overcame all odds, and eventually won 11-9 after many nail-biting points to emerge as the championship team!

2022 Don Mills Tennis Club could not cast a more gifted group of junior players who possessed the unique, and hidden attributes necessary to be a championship team. At times the players appeared to be outplayed, outmatched, and easily frustrated.  Those deficiencies, seen in the daytime practice hours provided by the club, seemed to be amplified in match play. One could easily isolate the problem to lack of footwork, lack of practice, poor technique, and motivation.  However, what made the 2022 DMTC junior team special and defined the team was a character. Each player possessed the right attitude, unwavering belief, heart, and unselfish spirit.  Their character was not only evident in their own play, growth, practice, and matches, but also genuinely displayed to each other and as a team publicly.

Well done DMTC Juniors! Not bad for a little community club. Keep up the good work. Looking forward to working with you again in 2023.

Ken Chin

DMTC Jr Program Director

[email protected]


Don Mills Juniors bring home some serious hardware! (2017)

At ICTA’s 2017 Tournament held at the AVIVA Center , two Don Mills juniors teams fought and won the titles for Boys A U14/U18 Champions and Girls U14/U18 Champions. Way to go Don Mills juniors!

DMTC Boys A team

Not only did they win the Championships for their categories, they and their captains made an excellent impression on the ICTA administration and the wider Southern Ontario tennis community. ALL the players and captains arrived on time, were organized, played well and showed good sportsmanship.

One fixture was severely interrupted by a couple of wheelchair-tennis members who had booked Centre Court to play while the team had a match scheduled too [an oops from OTA bookings]. The juniors graciously

DMTC Girls team

ceded them the court and agreed to play after them, even though this delayed matters considerably.

There was drama with the young ones! The kids played through pressuring dads and

moms on the sidelines, without breaking down; one opponent team had gone AWOL and arrived late on court by 30 minutes – on the adult circuit we’d be screaming FORFEIT!; one young lady came back from being down 3-7, to even it up at 7-7, to win it at the tie break 7-5 … all this on Centre Court – – and the kids play no ads, sudden death, so imagine the pressure. They don’t have two or three sets to recoup a late start –they play Pro 8, sudden death, and that’s it. Makes one focus, doesn’t it?

Of the very rare six awards given junior league-wide, for having an impressive, dominating wins season and playing in more than one league – TWO of these recipients were from Don Mills: Collin Guo and John Tadros. Not bad for products of a small community club, not an academy.

And only one junior out of the more than 1,000 ICTA junior league players received the Junior League SuperStar Award – for their playing, participation, sportsmanship, volunteerism in promoting tennis and general good ambassadorship – your club’s very own inimitable Élize Kooij.

Bravo Don Mills Juniors for bringing in the haul and reinforcing the message that our investment in junior development is worth it! Parents present were smiling from ear to ear, so proud of the kids and their hard work, but also of the club’s representatives and volunteers. Congratulations to captains Deisy Sosa, Franklin Godoy, Angela Kooij and Peter Lindsay for giving so much to developing junior tennis at Don Mills this year and for guiding the kids through to championship. We’ll do it again in 2018.

More news and photos will be posted on the ICTA website shortly at http://www.intercountytennis.com/

The ICTA is dedicated to the advancement of team tennis in Southern Ontario. More than 120 clubs belong to the ICTA. Member clubs stretch from Peterborough to Oakville, from Kleinburg to downtown Toronto.

Don Mills Tennis Club is a 500-member tennis club in North York offering well organized instructional, recreational and competitive tennis. We strive to foster athletic skills while teaching good sportsmanship and fair play.