Halfway through its season, the adult mixed doubles teams from Vicksburg are enjoying another banner season.

Two of the three teams, the 6.0 and 8.0 squads are undefeated in league play in the Mississippi Tennis Association. The 7.0 squad lost its first match of the summer last week against one of the top teams in Jackson.

The 7.0 team, which advanced to the state tournament last year, is 4-1 this season. The 6.0 and 8.0 teams are both 5-0. The Vicksburg teams will play five more matches before the state team tennis finals Sept. 16-18 in Oxford.

The Vicksburg teams — which have a total of 25 players — have been able to overcome a disadvantage in youth with guile and moxie, said team captain Dennis Butler. The average age of the Vicksburg team is the mid-40s.

“The season has been going good,” Butler said.

While the goal is to win as a team, Butler is a big believer in participation. Each team brings 14 players to a match, seven men and seven women. The mixed doubles teams are matched together based on the player’s individual rating with the United States Tennis Association. Players are rated from 1.0 to 7.0, with the lowest rating being a novice and the highest a professional.

In league team tennis, a 5.0 rated player can be teamed with a 3.0 to make an 8.0 mixed doubles team. The teams play seven matches in a best-of-three set format.

“The goal is to get everybody to play,” Butler said. “That said, I still try to work it to give us the best chance to win the team match. You try to put together two really strong court teams and then work from there. I’m looking to win at least two out of every three matches.”

The 53-year-old Butler came to tennis later in life, but his natural athleticism has helped his progress and he is now a 4.0 rated player.

“I never played tennis in high school, only started about four years ago,” Butler said. “Most of our players might have played at one time, and then stopped, but now they have come back to it.”

One such player is Terrie Falls. She played collegiate tennis at Delta State in the early 1980s. Raising two children made it difficult to pick up the racket again. But as her son, Jeremy, became a standout player at St. Aloysius, Falls caught the tennis bug once again.

Despite not having played competitively for more than 20 years, it took only one season for Falls to get back in a groove.

“I love being back,” Falls said. “They rated me at 4.0 because I played two years in college.”

Butler said he likes the experience of his team members, but added it would be a plus if some younger players joined. Vicksburg has to compete in the Jackson district and many of those clubs can draw from recently retired college players. Those athletic 20-somethings give the Jackson teams a big competitive advantage.

Most of Vicksburg’s team is in its 40s. One player, Henry Tatum, is 63.

“Jackson has such a big pool to pull from,” Butler said. “We just don’t seem to get the younger kids. The ones here tend to get burnt out after high school and step away. We hope to get them to come back to it. Our team is aging. I would say the average age is 40 or more.”