Cambridgeshire Lionel Cox 2014

Over the first bank holiday weekend in May, Cambridgeshire’s young tennis players were competing against 9 other counties for the Lionel Cox trophy at Queenswood school. There were events for U9, U10 and U12, each age group consisting of 3 boys and 3 girls.

On Saturday, the U12 boys kicked us off with two superb performances to beat Hertfordshire and Berkshire both 3-0. The U12 girls lost a tough first match with the eventual champions Suffolk, but finished with a strong victory over Berkshire. The U10 girls found Saturday hard playing some strong opposition and didn’t manage any victories, although Lydia Sivirentsava played 3 sets each match and won 2 rubbers. The U10 boys started slowly losing to Hertfordshire and then had a superb match with Suffolk, narrowly losing 2-1 with all matches requiring match tie breaks, Yujiro Onuma coming from behind in the 3^rd set tie break to win. They finished Saturday well by beating Berkshire. Finally the U9 Boys completed their event on Saturday, with Felix Dean, Teddy Hope and Charlie Adams leading the boys to a strong 3^rd place finish.

Sunday saw Cambridgeshire really step up their efforts and altogether win 12 out of their 15 matches. The U12 carried on where they left off, with Derrick Chen, Vincente Castillo and Harry Wendelken winning a tough first match against Essex and then comfortably beating Suffolk. In the final, Vicente won the first rubber playing superb tennis throughout to leave Derrick to win the title. Derrick started quickly to win the first set and played some tough tennis to ensure the U12 boys title. The U12 girls, Chaaya Malik, Megan Carmichael and Natasha Scott each played their part in beating both Northants and Oxfordshire to setup a 3^rd / 4^th place playoff with Herts. Megan gave us a 1-0 lead but Herts came back well to win 2-1 leaving us a strong 4^th. The U10 boys, Yujiro Onuma, Alex Boyd-Bench and Rohan Iyengar didn’t drop a rubber on Sunday, beating both Bedforshire and Norfolk 3-0. Our U10 girls, Tiffany Qin, Lydia Sivirentsava and Jessica Wood recorded their first win against Norfolk and then followed up with another good win against Bedfordshire to finish 7^th. Finally the U9 girls came and played their entire event on Sunday. The team of Weiqi Ye, Sarah Thomas and Gabriella Zailer-Fletcher lost to a strong Hertfordshire team but then won their next 3 groups with some great performances from Gabriella who had only just started orange ball. They eventually came a strong 4^th.

Overall, Cambridgeshire finished an excellent 4^th narrowly behind Suffolk with Hertfordshire winning the trophy.