Gopher alumni take part in charity tennis tournament

Published 8:50 pm Monday, August 6, 2018

Former Gopher tennis players and coaches competed in the 33rd annual Pine Tree Apple Tennis Classic Tournament over the weekend to help raise funds to support research for children’s cancer.

Gopher women’s tennis alums included Jessika Mozia, Alexa Palen, Paula Rincon Otero, Tooli Wilkins and Kathy Bjornson, as well as former Minnesota assistants Imke Reimers and Luciano Battaglia.

Former Gopher men included Julian Dehn, Andres Osorio, Tucker Saxon, Tobias Wernet and Kevin Werwie.

Email newsletter signup

The tournament is a mixed-doubles competition with three separate divisions: Open Division, Masters Division and Grand Masters Division. It was hosted in White Bear Lake from Thursday through Monday.

Osorio and his partner took the Open Division title, defeating the Gopher pairing of Wilkins and Dehn 6-3, 6-0, while Werwie, in his 25th year in the tournament, won the Masters Division 6-2, 6-3. Bjornson advanced to the finals of the Grandmasters Division, but fell 6-1, 6-2.

Starting in 1986, the tournament now hosts more than 110 of the area’s top men’s and women’s tennis players during this annual, mixed doubles tournament. According to their website, PTATC has raised over $5 million in their 33-year run for children’s cancer research.