Playing Tennis For a Cause

Doubles partners Emily Gean, 14, left, and Cara Stine, 15, both of Bentonville, celebrate a point Thursday while playing in the Cancer Challenge at the Kingsdale Tennis Center in Bella Vista. The afternoon event featured an instructional clinic and juniors tennis tournament.
Doubles partners Emily Gean, 14, left, and Cara Stine, 15, both of Bentonville, celebrate a point Thursday while playing in the Cancer Challenge at the Kingsdale Tennis Center in Bella Vista. The afternoon event featured an instructional clinic and juniors tennis tournament.

BELLA VISTA — When tennis pro Paul Pautsch visited young cancer patients at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Center for Children in Lowell he said he was moved by the experience.

Correction

A previous version of this story had an incorrect name of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

“You want to talk about something that will tear you apart?” he asked during his opening remarks for the Cancer Challenge Junior Tennis Tournament on Thursday. Those children are one of the reasons Pautsch has raised money to fight cancer for more than 25 years.

The junior tennis tournament kicked off the 2013 Cancer Challenge with 44 players between ages 12 and 18. The adults will have their tennis tournament today and Saturday. There's also a golf tournament today and Saturday at the Kingsdale Golf Complex, a trap shoot tournament at the Highlands Gun Range today and 5K and 10K runs at Orchards Park in Bentonville on Saturday morning.

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Cancer Challenge Events

To see Cancer Challenge events for today and Friday, go to www.cancerchallenge.com/Events/2013_Cancer_Challenge_Event_Schedule.htm

For Pautsch, it all started when he was hitting tennis balls with Walmart founder Sam Walton in 1986. The next year, Pautsch, with Walton’s encouragement, helped organize the Phillips Pro Celebrity Challenge to raise money for cancer research.

The Phillips Pro Celebrity Challenge just got too big and in 1994 the Cancer Challenge replaced it, Pautsch said. This year, on its 20th anniversary, Pautsch expects the Cancer Challenge will pass the $10 million mark in money raised.

“We’re real proud of the things we’ve done,” Pautsch said.

Pautsch lost both his parents and, more recently, his sister to cancer. His brother is fighting lymphoma.

“Each diagnosis just made me work extra hard,” Pautsch said.

Erica Baldwin, 13, will be in the eighth grade when school resumes in a few months. She usually runs in the Race For The Cure each year. Another school activity kept her from participating this year.

“So this is my makeup,” she said of the tennis tournament. She competed for her surrogate grandmother, a breast cancer patient.

Acadia Pinault, 14, wants to join the tennis team when she starts ninth grade at Bentonville High School in the fall, so getting in as much tennis as she can is important to her. She has also took part in tennis camps at the Kingsdale Tennis Complex in Bella Vista. The camps give her chance to break down her game and work on each component. Thursday’s tournament was about competing and also supporting a good cause, she said.

Both of Pinault’s grandfathers died of cancer, she said.

“She wanted to do this so other people don’t have to go through the same thing,” said Amy Pinault, her mother.

For other players the tournament is more about fun.

“We play for fun with our friends,” said Kruti Shah, a member of the Bentonville High School tennis team. Even the mid-90 degree temperatures didn’t slow them down. “We’re used to it,” she said.

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