The Bucks county 12u boys team were in action over the weekend at Queenswood School, for the 41st Lionel Cox event. This event features all the Eastern region counties where the team are split into two groups of five with play-off between the groups to decide the winner/runner up etc. All the matches were on green clay. The weather thankfully this year was warm and sunny.
The Bucks team was Dylan Smith (Milton Keynes) Matthew Blood (Halton) Ethan Hague (Halton) and Lucca Vujasevic (WIN tennis).
First match on the Saturday for the Bucks boys were Northants. The team enjoyed a comfortable win with Dylan, Ethan and Lucca losing just 3 games in the match. Also on the Saturday the same team played Norfolk and enjoyed another comfortable win losing only a handful of games. Saturday therefore saw the team sitting pretty as league leaders but further challenges lay ahead.
The Sunday saw glorious sunshine, light winds and blue skies. Matthew replaced Lucca for the Sunday matches. Our first match was against a very tricky Bedfordshire team. Ethan playing at 3 lost to his opponent in two sets. Ethan had chances but couldn’t convert. Matthew won without losing a game and Dylan impressively game from 0-3 down in the first set to take the next 9 games and win 5-3 4-0. Maybe a little complacent from the easier matches the day before. Not now though.
Our final group match was against Oxfordshire who on paper were the strongest in the group. Matthew lost to a very difficult opponent but fought hard, Dylan won a magnificent championship tie break to beat the Oxon no 1 and it was left to Ethan to secure a win that would take Bucks through to the final. Ethan with heavy support brought all his match play experience to bear and won a nail biting match.
So to the final where Dylan met the no1 in the country. Dylan excelled himself and worked so hard but was edged out. With Matthew and Ethan both losing it was the runner up slot again.
That’s the 3rd year running the 12u boys team have been runners up. A magnificent achievement.