“It was a really exciting and unexpected win for us,” said Kallie Speller a product manager at Wyeth. The team recently began playing in local corporate leagues this year as a way to have “organized tennis play and extend their relationships with their coworkers.”

Other companies agreed with Wyeth’s intentions, that the goal wasn’t really about coming up victoriously. The Corporate Challenge provided an afternoon of fun with coworkers and new friends outside the corporate environment.

Keith Mattes and Lee Giobbie

Antonio Elefano, a lawyer at Kaye Scholer, found it enjoyable to play with some colleagues that he doesn’t closely work with. “We’re all equals out on the court,” he noted, after playing with one of the partners at the firm. Elefano also admitted that he was “having the most fun when not actually competing,” but just practicing with his coworkers and enjoying one of the last warm days of the season.

Members of the Bloomberg team agreed with Elefano. “Our whole company is represented today,” noted Seth Green a member of Bloomberg’s analytics department, who was amongst coworkers from the programming and news departments.

Saturday was also an opportunity for the participants to meet new people with diverse careers (and skill levels!). After playing each other, Keith Mattes, a video broadcaster at Point Set Indoor Racquet Club and Lee Giobbie, an employee of Comcast hung around together, watching their coworkers battle it out on the courts.

“You meet a lot of good people here,” Mattes said. “Regardless of the tennis, you’re always having fun.”

Everyone certainly did have fun, on and off the courts!

Point Set Indoor Racquet Club

Bloomberg