England's Boys and Girls teams have both claimed silver medals at the International School Sport Federation's (ISF) World Schools Tennis Championships held in Albury-Wodonga, Australia.
The England teams, led by Head of Delegation Jean Gates, both faced tough finals with the boys losing out to Italy 4-2 and the girls being defeated by an impressive Turkey team 5-1 featuring four players in the junior world top 200.
Reed's School from Surrey were representing England Boys with coach Nick Greenhouse and were reigning champions, following their win at the previous ISF Tennis Event in France in 2011.
Queenswood School from Hertfordshire, who qualified as a result of winning the Aegon Team Tennis Schools National Championships in July 2012 along with Reed's, were representing England Girls at Wodonga Tennis Centre with coach Tom Corrie.
England Boys Jamie Malik, Josef Dodridge, Shamael Chaudhry, Lucas Taylor and Will Maslen, reached the final and guaranteed a medal following a 4-2 win over New Zealand in their semi-final.
"We lost a really close match with Italy and just couldn't quite pull through but well done to all the guys for picking up silver and I know everyone really enjoyed the whole experience," said Malik.
Corinne Blythe, Chloe Lant, Molly Reed, Rebecca Smaller and Katarina Weymouth were in action for England Girls and reached their final courtesy of a 3-3 win over France which went down to number of sets won.
"It was a really tough final and Turkey's players all have very high ITF rankings so it was always going to be difficult but I think we learnt a lot and hopefully we'll be coming back in two years' time and claim gold then," said Weymouth.
Paul Williams, Schools Tennis Manager at the Tennis Foundation, added, "This is an outstanding achievement by both England teams and on behalf of British tennis I would like to congratulate the players for the positive way in which they represented their schools, clubs and country both on and off-court. The teachers and coaches of Reed's and Queenswood Schools deserve great credit for their tennis programmes – developing players and teams capable of achieving against the very best school teams from across the world. It also shows the strength of our own national Aegon Team Tennis Schools competitions, which gives pupils of all abilities and ages the opportunity to play regular competitive tennis and to represent their school."
Read blogs from the tournament along with videos and photos here.
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