30/08/13
After winning the men's and women's Group 1 singles events at the Tennis Foundation's National Learning Disability Tennis Event for the last two year, Chorley's Fabrice Higgins (pictured) and Birmingham's Melissa Brookes added to ther medal collections after winning the corresponding Group 1 singles events at the Special Olympics National Summer Games in Bath.
Higgins, a triple gold medal winner at the INAS World Tennis Championship at the end of June, won both his round-robin matches against two of his GB team mates in the Czech Republic, Cheltenham's Thomas Mellor and Builth Wells' Shain Lewis to claim his gold medal in Bath.
Brookes won all three of her matches in the women's Group 1 singles and while she claimed the only tennis singles gold medal for the Special Olympics West Midlands Region, Higgins clinched the only singles gold medal for the North West Region on the tennis courts at the University of Bath's Sports Training Village.
There were two gold medals for the East Region after Sarah Simpson, a former medallist at the Special Olympics World Summer Games, won the women's Group 2 singles with three wins from her three matches, while Oliver Beadle was unbeaten in his three matches in the men's Group 3 singles.
There were three gold medals for Special Olympic East Midlands Region as Joseph Eccles beat his team mate Alex Eustace to win the men's Group 2 singles, while Scott Brown just had the edge in the closest finish to any group after the first two days of competition to win the gold medal in Group 5. Alexander Hopkinson finished on the top step of the podium after winning both his matched in the men's Group 8 singles.
Garry Hamilton and Sean McCormick clinched a brace of gold medals for Scotland West, both remaining unbeaten in their three matches apiece to win the men's Group 4 and men's Group 6 singles events respectively. South East Region claimed their sole tennis singles medal courtesy of Miles Cosham, who won all three of his matches in Group 7.
View the singles results here.
19/08/13
Thirty nine players from nine different regions across England, Scotland and Wales will contest the tennis events at the 2013 Special Olympics GB National Summer Games in Bath from 28 August to 1 September.
The players will be divided into groups alongside others of like tennis ability for the three days of singles and doubles competition in the Tennis Hall at the University of Bath's Sports Training Village.
Held once every four years, the Special Olympics National Summer Games have previously been held in Cardiff, Glasgow and Leicester since 2001. Bath will host the 9th National Summer Games as a total of 1700 athletes gather for the country's largest sports event for athletes with a learning disability. Tennis will be one of 12 sports in which athletes will compete for medals in Bath.
The Tennis Foundation's calendar of learning disability tennis camps and annual National Learning Disability Tennis Event play an important part in the players' preparations for competitions such as the Special Olympics National Summer Games, with some players going on to be selected for the Special Olympics European Summer Games and World Summer Games.
Among the players who will be vying for honours in Bath this year will be Sarah Joy Simpson from Special Olympics Eastern Region and Neil Samuels from the West Midlands Region, who represented Great Britain in the Special Olympics World Summer Games in 2003 in Dublin.
Entries also include four of the six players that represented Great Britain at the 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Athens, Greece, where East Midlands players Joseph Eccles and Alex Eustace, Scotland West's Lucy Porteus and Wales's Shain Lewis all won two medals each.
While Lewis will be the only tennis player in Bath representing Wales, Lancashire's Fabrice Higgins will be the only tennis player from the North West Region as he bids to add to his unbeaten singles record at the Tennis Foundation's National Learning Disability Tennis Event in Nottingham over the last two years.
The largest group of tennis players will come from the East Midlands Region, with Eccles and Eustace among 10 players from the East Midlands vying for honours.
"The National Summer Games always produces some very good quality tennis and is played in tremendous spirit as the players try to build on their hard work in training in with their Special Olympics Groups and at Tennis Foundation weekends," said coach Lesley Whitehead, the Special Olympics Great Britain Technical Advisor for Tennis.
"Having worked with many of the players over a number of years and seeing new players coming through it's always very exciting to see how they all develop and the enjoyment they get from tennis."
The tennis event begins on Thursday 29th August.
View the order of play here.
Find out more about the 2013 Special Olympics GB National Summer Games here.