Venos, Lanucha, McIntyre Clean Up at Birmingham National Wheelchair Tennis Championships

The Birmingham National Wheelchair Tennis Championships wrapped up on Sunday at the Sobeys Atlantic Tennis Centre in Bedford, NS, crowning the best wheelchair players in the country. 

29 entries were competing across seven brackets over the last week. In the end, many of the people lifting the trophies were familiar faces. 

Three athletes doubled-up in Bedford, as Thomas Venos, Natalia Lanucha, and Mitch McIntyre all won two titles.  

The most hotly-contest final was in the women’s open singles where Lanucha defeated Anne-Marie Dolinar 6-4, 6-2 for the title. It was the fourth consecutive final at the event between the two women. They have alternated victories. 

Lanucha and Dolinar also teamed up to win the women’s doubles, winning both of their matches in the round-robin event 6-0, 6-0. It was Lanucha’s fifth consecutive national doubles title, second in a row with Dolinar. 

In the men’s singles, Venos cruised to his fourth national singles title, dropping just seven games in six matches. He won his first four matches 6-0, 6-0 before Shawn Douglas Courchesne pushed him to 6-4 in the first set of their championship flight semifinal.  

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Venos beat Jean-Paul Melo 6-0, 6-3 in the final. 

Teaming up with Barry Henderson in the doubles, Venos dropped just two more games in six sets to win his fifth consecutive national doubles title. Henderson has been the Alabama-product‘s partner for the last four victories. 

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Mitch McIntyre was the King of the Quads, winning both the singles and doubles titles. McIntyre dropped a single game in three matches in the round-robin to win the singles competition. That one game he lost was to doubles partner Gary Luker. 

Luker and McIntyre claimed the doubles title with a double-bagel win over Steven Dunn and Hisham Mohammad. The two victories were McIntyre’s first at the National Championships. 

Rounding out the winner’s circle in Bedford was John Chen, who emerged from the three-player field to win the junior singles title.