In This Issue:

Annual Turkey Shoot Tournament - Nov. 15 Annual General Meeting - Dec. 6 Dues are Due! Renew your membership. Welcome New Members President's Message Board Openings

Fright Night Friday Recap Round Robin Recap Autumn Haze Recap Oakridge Recap Club Championships Recap Member's Page

ANNUAL TURKEY SHOOT TOURNAMENT

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH

There are quite a few new members that are not familiar with this tournament. The entry fee includes bringing a non-perishable food item, which is donated to a local food bank. This is a mixed-doubles round robin tournament (you do not enter with a partner) where members are divided into two teams, the teams then compete against each other to see which one is the better! The winning team receives a $10 gift certificate from a local grocery store to help with the purchase of their turkey…or to donate it to the food bank. If there is enough interest, there will be two sessions.

I am not sure our traveling Tournament Director is back from Europe, so I will take the entries and Ron Elmer will help with the event.

Some of you will be pleased to know that this is the end of our "tournament/social season" and we will just have the regular Sunday play until we have the Hello Tournament in February. The Hello tournament is to welcome new and returning members.

Click here for the Turkey Shoot entry form.

- Marguerite

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ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2009 - JOSLYN HALL, REED PARK

It seems like I am always apologizing for something or the other, so here we go again. We have to reserve the meeting space at least ten days in advance. November 23rd is not available until after 5 o'clock and I will not be here November 29th, so that moves it to the above date. Surely this is enough time for you to plan on giving an hour or so of your time to give input to the board of your opinions, good/bad/or indifferent.

Thanks - Marguerite

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DUES ARE DUE!!! FAMILY PRICE CHANGE

One more year we are not raising our membership dues, which are due 12/31/09, except for the members who joined after October 1st ; they are paid until December, 2010. We do have one big change - there is now a family membership of $130 (two adults) which includes one minor child (under 18); each additional child would be $15 more; a child (10 to 18) may join alone for $30, but they would have to have a director be responsible for them and Bill Nissley has said that he would do that.

Click here for the membership renewal form.

Click here for the new FAMILY APPLICATION form.

- SMTC Board of Directors

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Welcome New Members

• Alexis, Steve   310-310-8031   3.5   M
• Arnold, Lynsea   720-937-3412   3.0   F
• Bierman, Mindy   619-602-1404    3.5   F
• Bledstein, Allan   818-384-5193 C   4.5   M
• Brys, Laura   216-513-9975   3.5   L
• Chinyee, Randolph*   424-634-0283   4.0   M
• Costache, Christian   310-625-2068   4.5   M
• DeWeese, Richard "Rick"*   310-454-7850   4.0   M
• Ferrer, Vincent   818-983-9011   4.0   M
• Guitian, Carla*   310-363-6598   3.5   F
• Hoffman, Jessica   310-434-1060   3.0   F
• Hutchins, Dawn   310-913-7526   3.0   F
• Lawson, Alexandra   203-249-4381   4.0   F
• McCright, Carol*   213-910-1815   3.5   F
• Morton, David*   310-968-7607   4.0   M
• Niknafs, Robin   310-309-0717   4.0   F
• Point, Ian   310-428-0109   4.0   M
• Sandys, Ron   3.0   M
• Shields, Scott   310-710-5899   3.0   M
• Stackel, Judy   310-650-1319   3.0   F

*Returning members from previous years. Carla Guitian, David Morton and Rick DeWeese are returning from injuries

NEW INFORMATION
Krakow, Marvin   310-394-0888

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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

As you may, or may not, know I have been rather busy this year helping some of the directors, especially the new ones, Diane Brooks, Membership, and Bill Nissley, Tournaments, plus filling in for our Social Director who had major surgery. I am sure that the new directors will become more familiar with SMTC procedure and take over more of the duties. Diane has certainly increased our membership with the involvement of the USTA leagues for both men and women and we do appreciate her efforts.

I think that the Friday night social events have been popular with quite a few people and would not be a problem if people would be on time, or if they sign up and cannot play, find their own replacement..Hint, Hint. We will continue with these starting in the spring, however, someone else will be in charge of these social affairs.

Tournaments have always been something that SMTC has had and this year, we had one that had to be cancelled due to lack of interest. Maybe most of you would just rather that we did not have them...let us know, please. A suggestion was made that perhaps the Club Championships are too expensive because we have wanted to have a nice dinner, so maybe we should go back to pizza and lasagna, have it at Reed Park with just water and coffee…what do you think about that one?

We will have two more doubles clinics which are popular with most everybody, but do not have the dates firmed up as I write this late newsletter.

We do have some interclub events set up already for next year, with Mountain Gate sometime in April. There was a change made of personnel at Mulholland Tennis Club and so our December event there has been cancelled for this year.

We have already received more new members since October 1st than normal..some of which have come from being on the web page. Please be nice to the new members as they then bring in additional members.

Please remember that any club is for the members, so please let's keep this bargain basement price tennis club alive and well. We have a lot to offer for a minimum wage! If you have suggestions, please send them in.

Thanks.
Marguerite Jorgensen, President

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TIME TO STEP UP TO THE SERVICE LINE!!

It is election time to the board of directors, with the following directors are up for re-election and their positions are available. The directors whose terms are expiring are Bruce Schelden, Treasurer; Ron Elmer, Interclub Director and Brana Hall, Social Director (Brana has resigned due to her injuries, so she will not be running for re-election). Therefore all of you nay sayers and people who think you could serve your club better than the current directors...now is your chance. We do have open positions, like Trip Director...where I hope the one who volunteered last week will sign up. The form is in this newsletter and all you have to do is to have five people sign their names and you are up for election. There is supposed to be six directors, plus the office of president, vice president and secretary, so we have room for more directors than are on the board right now! Time to serve your ace and jump right on in, the club needs active directors.

Click here for the board nomination form.

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FRIDAY NIGHT FRIGHT NIGHT - OCTOBER 30, 2009 - Recap

Well, this certainly was a fright night alright to the director! After many phone calls, a complete set of twelve women and twelve men was ready for the sheets to be printed for the event, when at 4 o'clock Chuck Crump emailed me that he had an emergency and could not play! Well, I emailed back for him to find a replacement and, sure enough, he emailed back with a friend, Steve Shields, who would take his place. Steve arrived on time and filled in quite nicely and promises to become a SMTC member! Well, that crises was over and then when we were checking in, Carol Reston said that Mike Sparno was not coming...news to me! Rob Baumann was there because he thought he had emailed me and because our server was down, I never received the message. So, we then again, had twelve and twelve. We had two new members, Robin Niknafs and Steve Alexis, who joined in the play quite nicely.

Two members, Jane DuBovy and Lynsea Arnold, did dress for the event, but the rest did not bother...guess they were saving their costumes for Halloween the next day. I did have on a black wig which fooled some of the people, especially Steve Shields when I came on the court to play with him!

Strangely enough, Carol Reston did not win this time! The women who had the most games were Diane Brooks with 27 games, followed by Carrel Hoffman with 25 games, and Carol Reston was third with 23 games. The winners of the men were David Morton (welcome back) and Ron Elmer, each with 25 games, followed by Joe Thigpen with 23 games. The weather was quite balmy, everyone was very pleasant and a good time was had by all. We adjourned to El Cholo's for more comradery and, oh yes, food.

This Friday night is the last one of this year; I want to thank Carrel and Joel Hoffman for stepping in to help me. Hopefully they will take over the duties of this event for next year. Joel said earlier, these are so much fun, why don't we do this twice a month. So I told him to come and help a couple of events ago and when he saw what happens with people being late, or not showing, etc., he said that once a month was just fine!

Seriously, when people are very late (like twenty minutes) or just a "no show" it makes it very difficult on the remaining people who have to wait or delay their game. It is just common courtesy to fulfill your commitment.

- Marguerite Jorgensen

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Round Robin Championship Tournament Recap

The Division 1 and Division 2 Round Robin championships proved to live up to their billing and were well worth the price of admission. In Division 1, both teams really played their hearts out. There were a lot of l-o-n-g points with strategic lobs, powerful overhands, and well-placed shots. Joan Matis/Sam Herr narrowly edged out Keith Donahue/Elsa Atayan in an 8-6 tiebreaker for the third set. I'd love to see a rematch!

The Division 2 match between Carol Katz/Ron Elmer and Sandy Zong/Michael Pulford was very exciting with a lot of momentum changes. Both teams played hard and smart tennis. But the steadiness of Carol Katz and the net play of Ron Elmer helped them squeak out the championship in two sets with scores of 7-5 and 6-4. Congratulations to both champions and runners-up and thanks to all the teams who participated in the Round Robin Tournament. Hope to see you all next year!

- Jim Castagnola

(Jim told me that if there was enough interest, he would do this again next spring…so be picking out your partners now that are willing to commit an evening or a weekend couple of hours...it is great fun to play all the different teams - Marguerite)

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Autumn Haze - Friday night social - September 18th - Recap

We had scheduled all of the Friday night socials on the third Friday of the month…imagine my surprise to find out this was a really big night for the people of a certain faith...oy vey! Well, I managed to scrape out twenty people, with some help of friends from the valley, from my office and Jim brought Yen Fen back. We had a few mishaps as per usual - late arrivals, etc. Anyway, we did have five courts and everyone was very congenial…hopefully also had a good time. We did have an uneven number of women and men, so we just made up teams of ten people on each side and if it was too uneven, they just traded partners. The big winners were Jim Castagnola with 27 games, Allison Starcher, Diane Dunbar and Carrel Hoffman each had 24 games; the next closest was Andy Hasan with 23 games, Paul Suchecki had 22 games and there were four people with 21 games and it dwindled down from there.

Thanks for everyone being so understanding and thanks to Diane and Dorian Dunbar for coming over the hill on Friday night. Of course, we then went on to El Cholo's to carry on the social evening!

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OAKRIDGE TENNIS CLUB - Interclub event - Recap

This was a new club to our interclub events that came to Santa Monica from Simi Valley and challenged us with very strong teams…it was not pretty, but they want us to come visit them the next time. It was men's/ladies' doubles and all of their partners were very used to playing with each other..so six teams from SMTC and six teams of Oakridge played the best out of three sets and only two of our teams played the third set! We did have one decisive winner - Kyle Shapero and Richard Gerwitz. We did manage to win 60% of the games however. Very nice people who will let us play with them again.

- Ron Elmer

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2009 SANTA MONICA CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS

Well, we had a board meeting and agreed to have the above tournament. The board agreed on the terms and Bill Nissley agreed to run the tournament and let me collect the money and the entries and he would do all of the rest. We distributed the membership list amongst the board members and each one was to call twenty people...so much for that effort. Bill casually mentioned that he might be away, but if we postponed the tournament to the third and fourth weekends of October, he would be back. We had agreed to have single elimination, best two out of three sets, with the third set a 10 pt. tiebreaker and that if we did not have four entries in a classification, then that classification would be cancelled. Trophies would be given to first place only if there were only four entries in that class and if the classes were larger, then there would be a second place trophy.

So much for planning - Bill left the Sunday before the tournament started - my best helper, Ron Elmer was working 12 hours a day, so no time for me. Jim Metzger was the first entry on September 17th and they slowly dwindled in after that time. There was only one entry for the 3.5 women's singles, then that entry moved to Hawaii; no one wanted to admit there were a 3.5 except for one team that normally played in the 4.0's; one entry in the 3.5's said they would move up if necessary so they were moved. After many phone calls, we finally had entries enough to make a tournament that would only be on three days, two days the first weekend, October 17th and 18th and the finals on the 25th. Well, that did not exactly work out either. We started Saturday with the 4.0 and 4.5 men's singles and the 3.5 ladies doubles @ 1 o'clock. The largest group was the 4.0 men's singles with eight entries and all looked good on paper, except that the winner of one match could not play the second match that day...so this slipped into another day.

I really won't go into all of the other things that went wrong, but I will say that I will never run another club championship tournament. Someone said I should have had a committee to help with the refreshments, like buying the ice needed every day, and the final straw on that one was someone complained that I did not have a particular energy bar they liked. Well, again this looked good on paper. Enough of the personalities that had to be appeased and the matches set for the time the person entered could appear. The scheduling also had to be so that if the person was in two different classifications they did not have to play twice in one day of the event. I also was lucky enough to be able to make the draw forms and people drew for their first opponents and finally on the last day they also drew to see what court they played on. We wound up with 45 entries and 35 people attended the dinner. (The entries are less than 25% of our membership.)

Somehow, however, we did finish, we did have trophies, we did have refreshments, and we did have a wonderful dinner catered by our own Katherine Spetner with help of her partner, David McKennett and good friend, Candace Tysdal. Members that helped Katherine were Gillian Cook and Allison Starcher.

Onward to the winners:

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3.5 Ladies Doubles (four teams)
Winners: Sue Moore and Carol Reston
Second: Jane DuBovy and Marguerite Jorgensen

3.5 Mixed Doubles (four teams)
Winners: Carol Reston/Mike Sparno
Second: Jane DuBovy and Bob Shubert

3.5 Singles (four entries)
Winner: Keith Donahue
Second: Gordon Berman

(Our club's secretary, Eric Rabinowitz sacrificed his body to make this class and the first set he played Keith went to 7/6, but won't mention the second set.)

4.0 Singles (eight entries)
Winner: Ted Malek
Second: Cyrus Namini

4.0 Mixed Doubles (four entries)
Winners: Carol Katz and Ron Elmer
Second: Jutta Ruehl and Randy Chow

4.0 Men's doubles (two teams)
Winners: Ron Elmer and Chris Clarke

4.5 Men's doubles (two teams)
Winners: Jim Castagnola and Raul Hernandez

(The above two teams then played each other and the winner was Castagnola / Hernandez)

4.5 Singles (four entries)
Winner: Raul Hernandez
Second: Keiji Okita

4.5 Mixed doubles (four entries)
Winners: Cassie Fisbeck and Mike Schmidt
Second: Phoebe Neil and Harry Weiss

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At least at the party everyone was happy and speaking to each other as we had plenty of food, lots of liquid refreshments and scrumptious desserts. (Be sure to remind me next year that I am not going to be involved except for moral assistance.)

- Marguerite Jorgensen

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Member's Page

Shirley McClaine is recovering from back surgery and will be away for some time. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Klavdia Goldshetyn has recovered from her broken hand ; as well as Guy Massé - nice to have you both back with us.

Mary Sunshine is finishing her assignment on a movie and will be back amongst us soon.

Mel Donalson has moved to Fontana to be with his parents who need his help, but he will try to be here once and awhile.

This is your page...if you want to advertise..if you want to write an article (pretty please) this is the space to put it in.

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