In 2005 the mens and womens varsity tennis teams were cut by UVM, but now the club team is working to bring the sport back to the University.

The club tennis team started in 2006 after the varsity team’s absence, senior captain Gabe Stine said.

Stine, along with junior Terra Arguimbau, joined the club five years after the varsity team’s departure.

What started as a “low-key” recreational club, has turned into a team that is “more competitive than we have ever been,” Stine said.

Stine and Arguimbau said they have made an effort to make the club more competitive in recent years.

This was done by increasing the number of weekly practices, and becoming “more serious” in those practices and various competitions.

“We have really tried to take the club to a more competitive level,” Stine said. “Honestly, the past three years we have been really progressing a lot, we have come a long way.”

This season, 40 students came to tryouts in hopes of filling the less than 20 available spots on the team.

This gave the team a “large pool” to choose from, Stine said.

The team did “well” last season, Stine said.

They won a tournament hosted by the University of New Hampshire in September and placed second in a competition at Northeastern University later that year.

The team also tied for eighth place in a tournament hosted by Harvard University Oct. 5.

Stine said that this was a “very competitive” tournament.

“We did the best we have ever done at Harvard,” he said.

Stine said that other competitive teams include Boston College, Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools.

This semester the team competed in a tournament at Dartmouth College, where they placed second, he said.

The first coach to work with the club tennis team this season was Ramsey Hoehn.

“We have gotten so lucky with him, he’s an incredible guy,” Stine said.

“Having someone with his knowledge and his leadership experience, and having someone to run the team like that just really gets everyone in the mindset of being competitive and being more serious about tennis,” he said.

This is Hoehn’s first year coaching the club at UVM.

He has taught various other tennis clubs such as Hay Harbor Club in Fisher’s Island, N.Y. and Jupiter Island Club in Hobe Sound, Fla., according to his LinkedIn profile.

“Meeting the players and evaluating their games was the initial focus,” Hoehn said.

“We tried to gear our doubles play to focusing on shot selection and positioning,” he said.

“In singles we worked on shot selection, recovery and building the point with patience,” Hoehn said.

Looking ahead to next year, Hoehn said he is confident that the club tennis team will do well.

“Next year’s team will have great success, as there are many returning players who were strong contributors,” he said.