Staff
Good thing Al Christiansen doesn’t smoke so that he won’t miss all the cigars he didn’t receive for coming close twice.
The Fort Frances resident pulled down a pair of second-place finishes at a tennis tournament this past weekend held as part of Sioux Lookout’s Blueberry Festival.
In the 12-man field for singles play, Christiansen went 4-1 to finish first in Pool ‘B’ via a tiebreaker, then beat Jonathan Delacroix (Sioux Lookout) in the quarter-finals and Al Cesiunas (Dryden) in the semifinal.
With the title on the line, Christiansen fell to Dryden’s Mike English in the championship match (score not provided).
Christiansen then joined forces with Cesiunas to take a serious run at the doubles title against six other duos.
With a 5-1 record, the pair won a three-team tiebreaker for first in the round-robin standings.
They then topped James Mansfield (Sioux Lookout) and B.C. resident Shawn Chippendale 8-5 in the semifinal, despite having just played back-to-back matches before that.
In the final, the Als ran out of gas and lost 8-1 to the Sioux Lookout tandem of John Libler and Ryan Brasier.
