VCU to title Champions Tour

By Melissa Jones

RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Commonwealth University has been selected to host the Richmond stop on the 2001 Champions Tennis Tour, the internationally known men’s senior tour with over 20 events in 11 countries around the world. To be known as VCU Champions, the event will be held from Sept. 27 through Oct. 1 at VCU’s Alltel Pavilion at the Stuart C. Siegel Center, 1200 W. Broad St.

The U.S. portion of the worldwide Champions Tour is sponsored by SUCCESS Magazine. The tour, sanctioned by the Association of Tennis Professionals, features such tennis greats as John McEnroe, Yannick Noah, Mansour Bahrami, Pat Cash and Guy Forget.

"We are honored to host and co-sponsor this event knowing that it will bring greater national visibility to Virginia Commonwealth University," said Eugene P. Trani, Ph.D., VCU’s president. "Also, VCU, with its nationally ranked men’s tennis team, has a perfect venue in the Siegel Center, which is central to the entire metropolitan area."

This is the fifth year that the Champions Tour will stop in the Richmond area but is the first time it will be held in downtown Richmond. The event comes on the heels of the summer opening of the VCU Health System’s Sports Medicine Center which is located adjacent to the Siegel Center. The VCU Health System is a co-sponsor of this year’s VCU Champions event, which will be broadcast live in the U.S. on the Fox Television Network as well as internationally.

"When we first heard about this event we saw a wonderful connection between these world-class athletes and our world-class sports medicine facility and physicians," said Hermes A. Kontos, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of the VCU Health System and vice president for health sciences at VCU. "The sports medicine center will be the perfect facility to treat these athletes while they are playing in Richmond."

"This event not only will have an enormous impact on the university and its new Sports Medicine Center, but also will have tremendous value for the City of Richmond," said Dr. Trani.

"The success of the VCU men’s tennis team as a national force in college tennis caught our attention," said Henry Brehm, president of SUCCESS Magazine’s Champions Tour. "When we coupled that with the Siegel Center as a regional, state-of-the-art facility, there was no question in our minds about this being the right venue."

Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., was a stop on the Champions Tour last year. "Having an event of that stature on campus brought a lot of people to our facility," said Richard Hudson Gould, director of men’s tennis at Stanford. "Everyone was talking about the tour when it left Stanford, it truly reached out to the community and raised awareness about our tennis program."

"This tournament can do for VCU what it did for Stanford," said Richard Sander, Ph.D., VCU athletic director. "We are incredibly proud of our accomplishments, and this is another way to let the world know about VCU and VCU men’s tennis."

The VCU men’s tennis team reached the NCAA finals against Stanford in 2000, marking the first time a VCU team had played for a national title. Following the tournament, VCU Men’s Tennis Coach Paul Kostin received national coach-of-the-year honors from the United States Professional Tennis Association. Also in 2000, the VCU Women’s tennis team included two national All Americans among its players.

The Alltel Pavilion at the Siegel Center has been the venue for several other national sporting events including the NCAA Women’s Basketball Semi-Finals in 1999. VCU also hosted the NCAA Women’s Volleyball finals which were held in Richmond in 2000.