Nottinghamshire competed for the second year running in the Mini Orange Festival of Tennis at Corby Indoor Tennis Centre on Saturday 14th January 2012.
The Nottinghamshire team consisted of Kieran O’Driscoll Pabla, Anna Buckley and Amelia Rajecki with Dave Everington as the team captain.
After last years 9th position finish the target was to make and improvement with a higher placed finish.
Nottinghamshire started off well with wins against Northamptonshire, Norfolk A and Hertfordshire B beating all of the teams with a 2 – 1 overall score. This meant that Nottinghamshire were placed into the top half of the draw for the second phase.
Knowing it was going to start getting really tough the Nottinghamshire team refocused and put their minds on playing against a strong Cambridgeshire team. With both Anna and Kieran dropping the first sets it started to look like it wasn’t going to be our day. Then the fight back started in both matches with both players then winning the next sets making it one set all in both matches. Things were getting really tight. Unfortunately, from this point the Nottinghamshire team could not keep the momentum with both players losing in three sets. Amelia followed on court with and impressive win but it meant the Nottinghamshire team had lost in the semi finals.
So it was a fourth place finish for the Nottinghamshire team on this occasion but the players can keep their heads held high knowing they fought all the way and the fact that the Nottinghamshire team were the only team with 2 girls in the team out of the three players, something that will certainly help in years to come.
Overall the team had a terrific day, with 24 players representing their counties taking part in 60 matches. Not one player got injured or ill and, to show how close the standard of tennis was, nearly 50% of the matches went to a third set with the level of play being extremely high and a delight to watch.
Dave Everington
Nottinghamshire 9&U Team Captain