Nelson tennis players shine at the West Kootenay Open<\/p>\n
Published 8:56 am Friday, August 21, 2026<\/p>\n
The West Kootenay Tennis Open saw Nelson players rise to the top.<\/p>\n
The tournament took place from July 17 to July 19 at the Nelson Tennis Club, where players from across B.C. were in attendance including from North Vancouver, Merritt and Kelowna.<\/p>\n
Tournament Director and player Mike Dickinson said he was impressed with how Nelson players performed at the open.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the beginning, Okanagan (players) used to be the winners, but now you are seeing more and more Nelson residents taking home the trophy,\u201d Dickinson said.<\/p>\n
One of those trophy winners was Tinashe \u2018Nash\u2019 Chikanda, for Men\u2019s A Singles. Chikanda also won alongside Dickinson in Men\u2019s A Doubles.<\/p>\n
\u201cTinashe is one of our top players. He played professional tennis in his younger years and moved here and became integrated into the tennis scene,\u201d Dickinson said.<\/p>\n
Locals Ivy Robin and Brenda Thomas took home the Women\u2019s A Doubles title, while Ron Van Dyke, Simone Simpson and Dalvini McLean claimed the B division.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Dickinson said he has noticed how the tennis club membership has increased and believed that is part of Nelson\u2019s success in the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith membership growing, there\u2019s more competition and more people for everyone to play with and improve together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There has also been a rise in youth joining junior programs. The junior tournament takes place on Aug. 22.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other age group that has grown is people between the ages of 40 and 55,\u201d Dickinson added.<\/p>\n
Matches for the Club Championships start Sep. 11 until Sep. 13.<\/p>\n
Dickinson wants this positive momentum to keep going for the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are hoping to create more of an interior rivalry with Okanagan by hopefully having more Nelson players go, visit and play in the tournaments in Salmon Arm and Kelowna,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is the next level for our club. We want to start playing more tournaments and representing Nelson.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nelson tennis players shine at the West Kootenay Open Published 8:56 am Friday, August 21, 2026 The West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-867076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}