It was July 1, championship day in Sunriver, and members of the Bend 55-and-over women’s tennis team had ice in their veins. They needed it. Two different matches in the final against a team from Lake Oswego came down to a third-set tiebreaker.

By the end of the day, Bend captain Darla Farstvedt and her teammates were USTA Pacific Northwest sectional champions. They might as well have tapped their wrists like Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard. It was their time.

“They say you get better with age,” Farstvedt, 66, said after a team practice at Bend High School a couple of weeks after that championship victory. “That’s our secret. We’re like a fine wine.”

The odds were not in this team’s favor heading into sectionals, particularly due to a lack of depth. The Lake Oswego side had almost 20 active players for doubles and singles competition, while Bend had just nine. Farstvedt recounted that during one of her matches she was struck on the ear by a ball and forced to take a brief injury timeout. The ringing in her ear subsided, and she rallied and got the win.

National competition looms Oct. 19-21. Seventeen sectional champions from around the country will meet at the U.S. Tennis Association national campus in Orlando, Florida. Farstvedt said her team will make a week out of it, potentially with a visit to one or more of the city’s numerous theme parks.

“It’s going to be so much fun,” she said. “It’s a real bonding experience, too. We all travel together.”

Team member Maureen “Mo” Everett, 61, competed in nationals at the same Florida venue last year with another team from Bend. She said the windy conditions and clay courts will pose a challenge for this team — most of whose players have never played on the slower clay surface. One potential advantage, she noted, is the court’s proximity to an airport.

“It’s bare land so the wind just blows like crazy,” Everett said. “If you time your serves with the takeoff of the plane, you can get a little extra zip on the ball.”

An advantage for the Bend players in sectionals was elevation (more than 4,000 feet in Sunriver), something they are more accustomed to than teams from the lower-lying Willamette Valley. No such advantage will exist in Orlando, where the elevation is 82 feet. Shots that would be out in Bend are more likely to be in, requiring an adjustment of both timing and rhythm, according to Everett.

Most of the team’s practices are held at the Athletic Club of Bend. The only outdoor practice this group gets, Farstvedt said, is once a week at Bend High, and even then it is nowhere near similar to the likely conditions in Florida. Tennis is tennis at the end of the day, the players said, but there will still be an adjustment period come October.

Farstvedt said the team’s strong chemistry could make the difference at nationals.

“Win or lose, we’re still great friends,” she said. “There’s no drama on this team. That’s rare, and I think that helps us.”

The significance of their achievement is not lost on Everett, who grew up in England with an appreciation for the game of tennis. She never played, though, until she was 50. Badminton was her game until she moved to Central Oregon.

“It’s incredible for little old Bend,” Everett said of her team’s championship run, recalling her experience at last year’s nationals. “People ask, where’s Bend? Some people ask, where’s Oregon? We’re up against teams from all over that are known for always being at nationals.”

Farstvedt and Everett said their team surprised its Pacific Northwest competition by winning the sectional championship. Next, they added, they are hoping to surprise some folks in Florida, too. Regardless of how October turns out on the court, the competition and camaraderie provide a chance to stay in shape and stick together. It is an experience everyone on the team — whose members range in age from 57 to 67 — acknowledged as an integral part of their lives.

Sporting gold visors and sparkling lightning bolts attached to their shoes, eight team members wrapped up their weekly outdoor practice with high-fives and sweaty hugs. On to Orlando in the fall.

— Reporter: 541-383-0307, rclarke@bendbulletin.com