More than 60 matches were played over the weekend, across boys and girls singles and doubles. The tournament was played under much cooler, overcast conditions than the heat wave of the previous week.
On Saturday, play featured the boys early rounds, with 12 players advancing to the second day of play via their round robin wins. Additionally, the girls singles round-robin tournament was held, with Cate Spring Junior WTN winner Elly Edwards going back-to-back to win her second title of the series. Kiki Chang collected the finalist trophy in her first participation.
Sunday morning saw the start of doubles match-play on dry courts and more partly-cloudy weather. The 20 doubles participants each competed in 3 matches, with a number of close sets played throughout the events.
In boys’ doubles, the finals was played between Nico Holve/Braden Stewart and Kakeru Hirofuji/James He. The pair of Holve and Stewart claimed top honors with a 6-4 win, with Hirofuji/He finishing runner-up and Alex Danely/Massey Scott taking the third place match.
Girls’ doubles featured close first-round matches, with Kiki Chang/Kiki Danely defeating Adhya Reddy-Hoelle/Taylor Dannemiller 6-4 and Lotte and Margo Nicholas squeezing past Riya Mitera/Kaisa Taggart 7-6 (3). The Kikis would go on to sweep their remaining matches to claim the girls’ doubles title, with Reddy-Hoelle and Dannemiller taking 2nd place.
In the boys’ single-elimination tournament on Sunday afternoon, after several rounds of play, Kakeru Hirofuji booked his ticket to the finals with a 6-1 win over Alex Danely. On the other side of the draw, Braden Stewart took an upset win over Diego Morales (6-3) to make it two finals in one day.
Hirofuji and Stewart took the court at 3:30pm, 6.5hrs after they had each started the day in doubles play, but the match was not to be a long one. Despite some excellent points in the early going, Stewart began to struggle with cramping and the physical play of Hirofuji proved to strong a challenge. At 3-1 for Hirofuji, the match ended in retirement.
The win for Kakeru Hirofuji marks his second singles title in the three-part Cate Junior WTN Series for 2026, with Hirofuji also taking the inaugural edition back in January. Stewart improved on his Round of 16 finish in May during the spring edition for a 2nd place finish in the fall edition.
Here’s the link to the 2026 Cate Fall Junior WTN Tournament for a deeper look at the draws.
Also during the weekend, Brendan Gordon received some Toroline string after being recognized by his peers for excellent sportsmanship throughout the tournament.
The Sunday pizza party was joined by another fun event called the “One-Point Ram Slam.” The event pitted tournament participants against each other in a single-elimination draw where each round is won with just a single point played. In the Australian Open version of the event, 32 players competed for a $1m Aussie prize, but as we don’t have Aussie currency here, the winner was playing for the title “Ram Slam Champion” and a $50 gift card to Lucky Llama Coffee House.
Ezra Oklu, Kiki Chang, Ryder Eberz, and Oliver Tande came through their first-round matches against Roshan Deshpande, Lotte Nicholas, Tyler Spaulding, and Ryland Montgomery (respectively) for a place in the semifinals. Ezra Oklu then forced an error from aggressive baseliner Kiki Chang, while Oliver Tande similar picked up an win through consistency over Ryder Eberz.
In the final, Tande deferred the serve to Oklu, who selected the shady side and produce a powerful body-serve that handcuffed Tande (who had already withstood a booming serve from Montgomery in the quarterfinal match). With Tande’s return clipping the net and falling back, Oklu, the youngest player in the tournament emerged as the first Cate School Ram Slam Champion and winner of the Lucky Llama gift card. Tande took solace in the runner-up award, a fresh set of Toroline string.
A big thank you to the many players and parents who made the 2026 Cate Junior WTN Series a blast to host. Also, appreciation needs to be directed at Cate School for being the event facility and to SB Tennis Patrons for partnering as a tournament organizer.
Keep an eye out for the 2027 Cate Junior WTN Series in January, May, and October of next year where we hope to see you all (and your friends, and their doubles partners) on the courts for some more fun tennis competition.
