From left, Sabina Czauz, Charlie Cooper, Tomas Majetic and Max Wong pose for a photo with their coach, Kevin Heim, after winning the U.S. Junior World Team Cup in May, 2024. (Photo by Paige Sterner/United States Tennis Association)
Four years ago, Thornton’s Sabina Czauz and Boulder’s Tomas Majetic had just picked up a tennis racket. Four years ago, they never could have imagined where that moment would take them.
Last month, the pair of 17-year-old wheelchair players — along with teammates Max Wong (New York) and Charlie Cooper (California) — won the BNP Paribas World Team Cup at the Megasaray Club Belek in Antalya, Turkey.
A United States team hadn’t won since 2017.
“I felt like we came in as the big favorites,” said Majetic, who attended his third World Team Cup. “I mean, people were telling us, ‘Oh, you guys got this. It’s easy.’ It was a confidence booster, but at the same time, it was kind of like, OK, but we still got to get through it. It was amazing. It was a great experience again. It’s always an honor playing with the USA on your back. You’re not just playing for yourself, you’re playing for your country.”
All four athletes had the chance to play in matches, and all four contributed wins. Majetic and Cooper each won their gold medal singles matches against Australian players in two sets. Majetic leaned on his athleticism, speed, forehand and serve to help him excel on the tricky clay courts.
He’s currently ranked No. 12 in the world according to the International Tennis Federation.
“Especially if it’s on clay, speed just plays a huge portion into it,” he explained. “The chair moves slower, so it’s being able to push through it, kind of out-grinding the other person, I guess. I feel like I did that pretty well. If needed, I could just get the ball back and hit it to a big target.”
By tournament’s end, Czauz was ranked No. 7 in the world, and won the ITF Wheelchair Junior Hilversum tournament in the Netherlands with two-set sweeps of her three opponents just this week. Earlier this month, she won the West Texas Pro Tennis Wheelchair Open.
She was the only rookie on this year’s World Team Cup team.
“If you asked me three years ago where I would be with tennis, I would have just been like, ‘Oh, it’s a hobby. I come down like two days a week or something.’ It’s just amazing how far I’ve gone,” she said. “It doesn’t feel real, exactly. It hasn’t hit me yet. I’m just kind of going through it to see where it’ll take me and it’s kind of like a dream. I feel like I’ll wake up and it’ll be like, ‘Oh, this hasn’t happened.’”
Czauz hopes that one day, she’ll be able to join the ranks of the Paralympians she’ll be watching in just a few weeks, as well as take her talents to collegiate tennis. Majetic wants to see how far his skills can take him from juniors into the men’s game.
They began their journey to stay active during a global pandemic, and now the lights don’t seem to be too bright for them. Their coach at the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center has relished in their success.
“We integrated with our high-performance program, with our able-bodied kids,” RMTC coach Kendall Chitambar said. “The first year of that, they didn’t play too much with the able-bodied kids, but they were there at the same time. They were feeding off each other and they were encouraging each other, inspiring each other. And then, all of a sudden, they were good enough to play with our able-bodied kids and ever since, now it’s full integration and they’re playing every day.
“It was incredible how fast that happened from where they were raw beginners just trying to figure out what the sport was, to two of the best in the country, and now two of the best in the world.”
