Troy King had a feeling a call would come.

Still, after two years working to teach children in Macon how to play tennis, King took precautions. After the Macon QuickStarts 10-and-under tennis team came up short in a first-place tiebreaker with Tupelo, neither King nor his wife, Tonya, told the seven players on their team there still was a chance they would get to go to regionals.

King didn”t want to disappoint his players, who shook off the outcome and wanted to get back out on the court as soon as possible.

The players will get their wish.

The Kings and their Macon team learned Saturday morning they had received an at-large bid to compete in the United States Tennis Association Southeastern Regionals on Aug. 19-21 in Mobile, Ala. The Mississippi teams will compete against squads from Kentucky, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina at the event.

While the news wasn”t surprising to King, it shows how far many of the beginning tennis players have come in only two years.

“We had a successful tennis camp this year, and we were hoping we could build from the camp we had last year,” said King, 46, who has been playing tennis only five or six years. “We were looking at kids who have never picked up a racket. But with hard work and by practicing with them, they were dedicated.”

King has a pro rating of 3.5, which is similar to a grade-point average that gauges a player”s aptitude. He and his wife, who is 37, teamed with Crayton Coleman, who works at the Mississippi State extension office in Noxubee County and is a longtime tennis player, to teach children how to play tennis. The first tennis camp last year grew this year, King said, and helped prepare the QuickStarts team for a local team tennis league. The team took second to a team from Starkville in that league, but it did so playing against 12-U teams because there weren”t any teams in its age group.

King said the higher level of competition (12-U teams play on the whole court, while 10-U teams don”t) gave his squad, which includes Nyshedra Jordan, Breanna Hibbler, Angel Tate, RL Mattix Jr., Kyziah Pruitt, Torean King, and Tyrus Miles, an advantage when it went to Jackson to compete against the best in the state. Five of the seven team members are 10. The other two are 9. There are four boys and three girls.

King”s son, Torean, 10, is on the team. His other son, Tyler, who will be 4 on Aug. 11, already has started playing tennis and is expected to get started in team competition when he is 7 or 8 years old.

Tyler”s amount of experience will be far more than the players on this year”s team. King only two or three of the children have been playing for a few months, while the others had never played the sport, which made instruction challenging for King and his wife. King said work only allowed the coaches to be with the players three to four hours a week, but he said all of them took to it immediately.

“There is an old saying, ”Hard work pays off,” and it really did,” King said. “We just started from scratch. We have watched tennis on TV forever, and everything we learned from television we tried to tell them. We can”t teach them everything about the game, but we have tried to teach them that if they are out there working hard they can be great players. You have to get them to believe.”

King said he and his wife have tried to do that by using a hands-on approach. At first, he said he or his wife would hold the arms of the players to show them how to swing level and how to hit the ball over the net instead of over the fence. He admitted plenty of balls went over the fence at the courts next to Central Academy, and many others went off to the right or to the left. But with a little patience all of the players adjusted and began to believe in themselves.

“What we have done in a short time is remarkable,” King said. “I am very proud of the kids. They put in a lot of time. Sometimes you have to sacrifice for the kids to get them where they need to be.”

King hopes the growth of the team and the interest in tennis in Macon will spur development. He is looking forward to the possibility that tennis courts will be built on the site of the city”s new baseball/softball facility, which is located on Highway 45, a short drive from Noxubee County High School.

King”s hope is more courts in Macon will translate into higher numbers for his tennis camps and will mean more team tennis involvement. As the players gain experience, they will be able to move up to compete in high school.

That maturation will take a few years, though, but King said he and his wife will continue to work hard to help players in Macon get there.

Judging from their work so far, those goals are well within reach.

“I think this is an awesome accomplishment for the seven kids who were playing competition tennis for the first time and for tennis in the Golden Triangle,” said Vanita Mattix, the local Junior Tennis coordinator. “The Golden Triangle had a league for the first time that consisted of 13 teams as well as a beginner league with nearly 50 kids who signed up. All together, there were 197 kids in our Golden Triangle area, which does not include the kids who signed up in the beginner leagues/ quick start programs in Starkville and Macon.”

King said the Macon team will work to secure financial help to defray the costs of traveling to Mobile, Ala. Anyone interested in helping the team should contact King at 726-9196 or 425-0381, Gary Naylor with the Macon Parks and Recreation Department at 251-5838, or Crayton Coleman at 361-0316.

Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.