LIONEL COX - Saturday 3rd to Sunday 4th May 2014: U12 Girls Bucks Team by Team Captain Caroline Care:
What a fantastic weekend!!!! The sun was shining and we had no rain all weekend.
A big thank you to all the parents for their wonderful support over the 2 days.
Played Bedfordshire in our first match and had a great start winning 3-0 win. The whole team only dropping 3 games. Our second match was against Essex which proved to be a much tougher affair going down 0-3 and although Darcey, Hannah and Alexa worked really hard in their respective matches it proved to be a tough round. Our final match on Saturday was against Norfolk, Alexa came through her match dropping just 1 game. Hannah and Darcey had much tighter matches with Hannah going down 2-4, 3-5 and Darcey 0-4, 4-5 (3-7) in the tiebreak. A tough first day, but looking forward to our final group match against Hertfordshire on Sunday.
Hertfordshire proved to be a very tough team and Darcey worked really hard to eventually going down 1-4, 1-4 against a very good opponent. Hannah and Alexa also lost their respective matches, but worked very hard.
Our play off match was now against Berkshire for 5th or 6th position. Alexa played her match first and found the first set difficult with too many errors, but made a real improvement in keeping the ball in play and although lost the 2nd set 2-4 played much better.
Hannah then had a marathon match eventually losing the 1st set 4-7 on the tiebreak having had a set point. This could have dented her confidence, but rallied and attacked the ball winning the 2nd set on another tiebreak 7-5, so we were now playing the championship tiebreak, kept her composure and eventually won this 10-8. Well done. We were now 1-1 in rubbers and it came down to the final match with Darcey. Having lost a very close first set 3-5, went down in the 2nd 2-4.
It was however a great team effort and I cannot fault the girls for their commitment and team spirit.