Fort Hare had not featured at the USSA tennis championships for 10 years prior to the 2024 edition.
The tennis programme was down love and love until assistant coach and honours student Qhayiya Vellem embarked on a massive recruitment drive that saw membership swell to more than 50.
His undertaking was so inspirational that the university granted him permission to field an eight-member team at the University Sports South Africa tournament in December.
Most acknowledged that they would be up against it and so they were. They rallied and scrapped for every point to secure sixth overall, in the process guaranteeing themselves a spot at the 2025 tournament.
Much of the credit can go to 22-year-old Unam Velapi, a former schoolgirl hockey star who won six of her eight matches in Pretoria.
She had been a resident of East London before doing her secondary schooling in Midrand, where she excelled on the astroturf.
Upon her arrival at Fort Hare, the public administration student was forced to seek her sporting fortunes elsewhere when it turned out that her favourite sport was a no-go.
That path led to the tennis courts at the back-end of 2023, where Velapi dabbled in the sport on a social basis to keep fit.
Fort Hare’s Unam Velapi won six of her eight matches at the USSA championships in December. Photo: Supplied
“When I first saw tennis, I wasn’t ‘wow’ about it. But when I started playing, I was addicted.
“You need to be very strategic when you play; almost like chess in a way,” she explained.
“I actually feel tennis teaches you more about life than hockey. You can’t rely on anyone else, it’s all about your mental fitness.”
She said being thrust into the USSAs as a newbie came as a shock – albeit a welcome one.
Fort Hare’s first matches were against NWU.
She was double-bageled in her opener, which hurt badly, particularly with her aunt in the stands. Another heavy loss in the women’s doubles later that day did little to lighten her mood.
“It was like, ‘Welcome to the USSAs’. We were very disappointed,” Velapi admitted.
Ahead of her matches against CPUT, she told herself that she could not travel all the way from the Eastern Cape simply to lose. It was exactly the peptalk she needed.
After losing the first set of her singles match 2-6, this time with her mother among the spectators, she surged back to close out the second 6-1. Now well into her stride, she coasted to victory with six unanswered games in the third.
Her form was to continue in the doubles, which proved to be a humdinger.
A 6-1 opening set had put them in the pound seats before they lost their way in the second to relinquish it 2-6. The winner would be determined by a 10-point tie-break.
The Fort Hare pair found themselves 1-3 and 3-5 down before levelling at 6-6. That proved the key moment as their opponents succumbed to the pressure to lose the final four points.
“I could feel they were defeated before they were defeated. They gave up,” Velapi, who has an all-court game, said.
The team faced University of Mpumalanga in the playoff for sixth and seventh – with only the winners qualifying for the 2025 USSAs.
Valapi made light work of both her singles and doubles encounters to help Fort Hare breeze home.
Even though they failed to get over the line against VUT in the playoff for fifth the following day, she demolished her opponents 6-0 6-0 in the singles and 6-1 6-1 in the doubles.
“I’m so proud of how far we’ve come,” Velapi, who gave credit to Qhayiya for carrying the team, said.
“We have had so many challenges, but that gave us grit.”