Team Canada W80

Team Canada W80 at World Championships

Anne Rungi’s first sport was badminton, for which she was a gold medallist while at University of Toronto, but she adapted to tennis quickly after moving to Port Colborne and joining the Welland TC in 1975. Career and motherhood made tennis a secondary activity at first, but there were signs of things to come when she joined a USTA 3.5 team at 50+ in nearby Buffalo and ended up winning the nationals.

Anne began playing Ontario provincials and Canadian nationals at 60+, and earned a spot on her first Team Canada at 70+. She continued through the 75+ years, and in 2025 made her debut at 80+ as team captain. What a great way to remain motivated to continue improving and also to see the world! Anne credits her Welland coaches – Dave Boland and Marko Petkovic – with keeping her game consistent, and sends this report from the ITF World Championships on October 5-10 :

Greetings to family & friends from Bol, Croatia on the island of Brac in the Adriatic portion of the Mediterranean Sea. In this most picturesque area of Croatia, we have beautiful accommodations, delicious food and great weather.

As captain of the Tennis Canada W80 team, it has been an adventure. Our former world- champion player, Inge Weber (age 89), contracted a virus with flu-like symptoms but still managed to play. However, Gisela Nouisser sustained a shoulder injury on our first day and was unable to compete after that. Dineka VandeBurgt and I rounded out the team, with Rosanne Marsh as our unofficial manager.

Ten countries competed in our age division with three round-robin pools. We were in Pool C with two seeded teams – Germany and Great Britain – along with South Africa and us. We played each team in a tie consisting of two singles and one doubles, with the winner of each match being the best two of three.

We won our first tie vs Germany 2-1, then lost to Great Britain 0-3, and went on to defeat South Africa 2-1. This put us in 2nd place in our pool, advancing us to another round-robin with Finland and Switzerland, the 2nd place finishers in the other pools.

We lost to Finland 2-1 and then Switzerland beat Finland 3-0. We played Switzerland on the last day to the most exciting finish : winning all three matches in tiebreakers! I had played nine matches, five of which went to a tiebreak. The physiotherapy service was important!

Our W80 Team Canada crew were Super Happy to finish 4th out of 10 countries, and were honoured to receive medals at the closing ceremony. Team France won the gold medal, with Team USA in 2nd place and Team Great Britain in 3rd.

For more about Masters Tennis, read Mary Potter’s blog : Why Masters Tennis Keeps Me Coming Back