Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Two pro South Florida tennis players remain in Turkey
Two pro tennis players from Delray Beach are still in Turkey following Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake and aftershocks that have killed over 11,000 people and rising in Turkey and Syria.
But they’re not trapped, according to Gayal Black, the mother of Tyra Black, one of the players. They’re staying by choice.
The worst of the disaster is likely over, but the death toll continues to rise as rescue workers uncover bodies from the rubble and further aftershocks shake the region. Meanwhile, freezing weather further endangers those left without shelter or heat.
Tyra Hurricane Black, 21, who goes by “Hurricane” Tyra on the court, and fellow player Maddy Bourguignon had just begun competing in the week-long W25 Antalya tournament when the earthquake struck, Black said. Antalya is a coastal city in the southern region of the country, about 500 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter.
Tyra Black slept soundly through the first 7.8-magnitude earthquake, her mother said.
Back in Delray Beach, Gayal Black did not. She woke up at 3 a.m. and something compelled her to turn on CNN. She immediately saw the footage of buildings crumbling and the words across the screen reading “Turkey.”
“I started crying,” she said. “I was hysterical.”
It took her about 2 ½ hours to get through to her daughter and know she was safe.
In the morning, Tyra Black arrived for her match and warmed up. But the match kept getting delayed. Five minutes before she was supposed to get on the court, the sports minister of Turkey canceled all sporting events in the country for safety reasons, Black said.
Hungry, Tyra Black went to eat lunch about noon at a restaurant in the resort where the players were staying. That was when the aftershock, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake, hit.
Everyone started running out of the restaurant, and Tyra Black followed them, though she didn’t know what was going on, her mother said.
“I said, did you take your food with you, and she said, ‘No I was scared, I just left what food I had left,’ ” Black said, “She said, ‘After that I wasn’t hungry.’ ”
She and the other tennis players spent the rest of the day outside in the cold and snow, bundled up in ski coats and keeping away from buildings, Black said.
Irene Bourguignon, Maddy Bourguignon’s mother, said she was worried at first, but emphasized that the earthquake struck far away from where her daughter is staying and that her thoughts are with those who have not been so fortunate.
“My daughter is absolutely fine,” she said. “They weren’t impacted.”
Tyra Black’s coach, Lawrence Carpio, made it onto a flight out of Istanbul Tuesday night, Black said. Carpio runs LAT Tennis Academy in Boynton Beach. Tommi Carnevale, another tennis player from Delray Beach who had flown to Turkey to accompany them, flew out the night before the earthquake in order to attend a tennis tournament back home.
Black’s daughter and Bourguignon could have returned home with Carpio, Black said, but decided to stay in order to compete in another tournament scheduled for next week, if the organizers don’t cancel it. The two women have known each other since they were 12.
When asked how she felt about her daughter’s decision to stay, Bourguignon said “I feel comfortable with their safety.”
Black said she was not happy about it. “I cried, like, ‘Please come home.’ She’s like, ‘Mom, I think it’s going to be easy to get in the main draw; I might even get seeded,’ ” Black said. “She’s so competitive, she just wants to play.”
Tyra Black, now a top adult player, won the Orange Bowl junior championship in 2013. Her older sister, Alicia Tornado Black, or “Tornado” Alicia, 24, competed in the finals of the U.S Open, her mother said. And their oldest sister, Nicole Pitts, was a top player who also won the Orange Bowl.
The two younger sisters “lived on the tennis court with their big sister since they were in diapers,” Black said.
As she waits for her daughter’s return, Black said she takes comfort in the fact that her daughter and Bourguignon are staying on the first floor of a new building that is only two stories. Originally, they had separate rooms, but now share one together, which Black said is a relief in case they need to “run out if it starts shaking.”
“If one doesn’t wake up, the other is going to wake them up, so that’s good,” Black said. “It’s much better.”