The most popular event on the Maine Tennis Association calendar began Friday morning in and around Yarmouth and continues through Sunday afternoon.

The Betty Blakeman Memorial Tournament entered its 23rd year with a field of 190 sprinkled throughout three singles and four doubles events.

“It’s probably the biggest tournament in New England,” said longtime director Don Atkinson.

The men’s open singles has the largest draw, with 98 entries. Only twice before has the draw reached triple digits.

Two-time defending champion Ben Cox, the head pro at the Portland Country Club, is the top seed.

The men’s doubles field boasts a record 39 teams, three more than last year’s previous high-water mark. Cox and partner Matt Dana are the defending champs.

The mixed-doubles draw includes 24 teams. Lewiston High graduates Mike Burke and Emelie Cloutier won it last summer but won’t defend their title. The top-seeded team is Jordan Friedland — the reigning high school singles state champ from Lincoln Academy — and Sadie Hammond.

Chantalle Lavertu, another Lewiston grad who now plays for Bowdoin, won’t be around to defend her women’s singles title. Instead, the top seed is Karolina Pierko, the former Biddeford High standout who won four consecutive (1996-99) high school singles titles and last played (and won) the Blakeman in 2003.

“I’m very excited to play the Betty Blakeman,” said Pierko, now a 30-year-old mother of three who recently moved back to Maine from Tennessee. Her husband, Phil Perry, is also playing in men’s singles. “It’s a great tournament and a lot of fun.”

Pierko won the MTA Championships in early July with a 6-4, 6-0 victory in the final over Olivia Leavitt, a sophomore at Falmouth High. In the MTA men’s final, Mt. Ararat High grad Mike Hill, a senior at Brown, beat Cox in straight sets.

Cox and Hill were the 2010 Blakeman finalists. They meet again this weekend, but only in doubles. Hill, the 2009 singles champion, opted against competing in singles. Instead, he is paired in doubles with Eric Blakeman, whose family has put on the tournament in memory of Eric’s mother, an avid tennis player who died of cancer in 1989.

Proceeds from the tournament, for the fourth year in a row, go to the Cancer Community Center of South Portland. Since its inception, the tournament has donated more than $100,000 to Maine-based cancer organizations.

“We ended up raising over $10,000 last year,” Blakeman said. “And this year it looks like we’re ahead of that by at least two to three thousand.”

Carrie Davenport, Eric’s sister, is recovering from injuries suffered in an October car accident in California that claimed the life of Taylor Griffin, the head of a high-end food import business for which they both worked.

“She’s healed well,” Blakeman said. “She promised she’d come back and play (mixed doubles) some year.”

In women’s singles, Leavitt and Falmouth alumnae Annie Criscione and Hallsey Leighton are among a rather thin field of 17 — down from 28 a year ago.

The only other women’s seed, besides Pierko, is No. 2 Curran Burfeind, the 2002 and 2006 Blakeman champion who also comes from Falmouth.

The other events are men’s 55-plus singles (nine entries) and 55-plus doubles and women’s doubles (13 teams). Seeded first in women’s doubles are Pierko and Elisa Whittier.

The men’s singles field includes 12 seeded players. The top four, in addition to Cox, are former champion Brian Mavor, Burke and John Weber, the 1993 Maine high school state champion from St. Dominic who went on to play at Providence College and now lives in Massachusetts.

Atkinson will send players to five sites today before proceedings are scheduled to wrap up at the Yarmouth High School courts Sunday afternoon.

The traditional Saturday night barbecue for players and their families is scheduled to get under way at 6. 

Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at:

gjordan@pressherald.com

Twitter: GlennJordanPPH

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