Team;
Gina Ofield, Lisa Knowles (captain), Jackie Thompson Aldona Greenwoo.
Also played Elaine Masters, Ann Brown, Sarah Usher and Stephanie Meins.
Having got promotion last year from group 2, we’ve had a fairly successful year in Group 1B this year.
It’s been tough. There are a lot of very talented tennis players in this group and our matches have been quite varied in standard.
We’ve missed Kathryn Hales this year who hasn’t been able to play any matches due to being injured with tennis elbow. As captain, I was a bit worried at the start of the season because Aldona was also injured for the first few weeks and then made a recovery and we were glad to have her back in the team
Our first match was against Devon at Home. They were a very strong team and beat us 5-0. Unfortunately too strong for us. Likewise Hamsphire and Hertfordshire were both very strong teams and both beat us 5-0.
However we had a much closer game against Cambridgeshire. This match was away for us. Aldona, playing at number 1 singles won her match against Christine Sprowell, who has a rating of 5-2, which was a great win for her as her rating is 6.2. I also won my singles against Rachel Hill. And Gina and Jackie had a fantastic win against sisters Fleur Clegg and Karen Cass, beating them 11-9 in the championship tie break. This secured a win after the first round and we ended up winning 3-2.
We then also had another great win against Surrey, boasting them 4-1.
Aldona and I seem to have some extremely long singles matches, up to 2 hours. We both had really close matches against Surrey and both managed to secure a win, mine in the 3rd set tie break.
Jackie and Sarah also had a close match against Jane Burniston and Claire Bertram of Surrey and won in 3 sets.
Overall we’ve ended 4th in the group out of 6, so we stay in group 1, which is a good result for us.
Well played team. It’s been another great year and a pleasure to be captain.