Above photo: Rick Borland and sister Judy Peake. Photo courtesy of benchedathletes.wordpress.com.
In 2008, Lloyd Borland was inducted into the Manitoba Tennis Hall of Fame alongside his son Rick Borland and daughter Judy Peake. With Rick’s son Trevor active on the Manitoba men’s Open circuit, three generations of Borlands have made significant contributions to the sport in the province.
The journey began in Minnedosa, MB, which had one or two grass tennis courts when Lloyd Borland worked there as a teacher. Borland, born in Crandall, MB, got his start in tennis in Minnedosa. He met his wife in Minnedosa and they later moved to Winnipeg and joined the old Wildewood club.
“He was your basic club player and learned how to play tennis more or less from a book,” Rick Borland said of his dad, a former president of the Wildewood club.
Lloyd Borland had the summers off work as a school teacher and would spend his time recruiting neighbourhood kids to play tennis at the Wildewood club.
“He would actually go to their house and convince the parents to let them play and he lent them a racquet,” Rick remembered.
Lloyd Borland not only got the kids into the club, he spent hours on the court teaching them – all at no cost.
“He developed at least five of them into Canadian champions (son Rick, daughter Judy, Eleanor O’Gorman, Nancy O’Brien and Maria Stubbs),” Rick said of his dad, who also volunteered his time to look after maintenance work on the club’s red shale courts.
Borland’s coaching set the foundation for the remarkable tennis careers of his son Rick and daughter Judy.
Rick Borland was Manitoba’s U13 champion at the age of 10. A few years later he reached the final at the U13 junior nationals before losing to Mike Carol of Ottawa. Then, in 1960, Borland beat Carol to capture the U15 Canadian junior title in Ottawa.
In Borland’s final years of junior play, the top adult player in the province was Jim Ioanidis from Portage la Prairie. Ioanidis had consistently been winning the Manitoba Open singles title, often beating Doug Cobb in the final. When Ioanidis moved to Montreal, the door opened for a new champion to be crowned (Ioanidis played on Canada’s Davis Cup team in 1964).
Borland, after losing to Ioanidis in the semifinals the previous year, beat Cobb in the 1964 final to win his first of four Manitoba Open men’s singles titles. Borland also collected nine men’s doubles titles (winning three times with Geoff Dyer, twice with Glen Ziprick and once each with Gerry Parkinson, Bob Walters, John Clancey and Bob Moffatt) and five mixed doubles championships (all with sister Judy) at the Manitoba Open.
Borland was president of the Winnipeg Lawn Tennis Club in three of the club’s first four years at its current location (it moved from Roslyn Road in 1972). In his late 20’s Borland took up squash, capturing his first Manitoba squash championship in 1978. Borland has won a total of 16 Canadian senior squash championships, his first coming in the men’s 45+ division in 1996.
Borland’s sister Judy Peake also enjoyed great success in multiple sports. Peake won the Canadian U13 girls’ singles tennis championship in 1955 and added the U15 national title two years later. She was also a two-time Canadian junior girls’ doubles tennis champion, winning both times with a player from Halifax. In addition, Peake captured three Canadian junior girls’ doubles championships in badminton and won numerous provincial badminton titles.
In 1967, Peake represented Manitoba in badminton at the first Canada Winter Games in Quebec City. Two years later she teamed up with Eleanor O’Gorman to win a silver medal in ladies’ tennis doubles for Manitoba at the first Canada Summer Games in Halifax/Dartmouth, while Peake’s brother Rick placed fourth in men’s tennis singles. Peake was four-and-a-half months pregnant at the Games, which only her family knew at the time.
On the tennis court, Peake won a total of five women’s singles, 13 women’s doubles and 11 mixed doubles titles at the Manitoba Open. In recognition of her accomplishments in tennis and badminton, she was named Manitoba Female Athlete of the Year in 1970.
Continuing the Borland legacy of racquet sports in Manitoba is Rick’s son Trevor, who grew up playing tennis, squash and badminton at the Winnipeg Canoe Club. In 2017, Trevor Borland reached the semifinals of men’s 40+ singles at the Steve Stevens Senior National Tennis Championships in Vancouver before losing to the No. 1 seed and eventual champion in three sets. Borland, the Winnipeg Winter Club’s head squash pro, has won three Canadian squash titles.
