Winter County Cup 2016 Ladies Team
In 2015 the ladies gained promotion to Division 2 and this year were fortunate to be given a local venue at Wavertree for 2016. Unfortunately, most of the County “ladies” were either unavailable or in the USA, but we were fortunate to have most of the top juniors from our successful 18 & Under team.
The team comprised of Ellie Aldrich, Rhona Cook, Eve Daniels, Kate Dewsnip, Olivia French, Hannah McColgan, Katie Merrick, Sally Proudlove, Eden Richardson and Katie Sidell.
Hannah had just had a brilliant week reaching the singles and doubles finals of the Nike Junior International at Wirral and as a result, sadly for us, she was not available to play on the Friday. After losing heavily 1-8 to an extremely strong Northumberland team on Friday, with Eden, at number 1, being the only winner, the team rallied to win a very tight match v Sussex 6-3, even though Sussex had been strengthened by two top players. Rhona won at number 6 and Olivia pulled off a very gutsy win at number 3 against a higher rated player, 7-6 7-5, despite being down in both sets. Hannah, who was shattered and injured after her marathon week managed to somehow get over the line, in 3 sets, to a very strong number 1, no doubt spurred on by Olivia’s win and encouraged by all her team mates! Eden won her singles in convincing style so at 4-2 up we were left needing one doubles for victory. The 2nd and 1st pair doubles went to the wire. Hannah and Katie S and Eden with Eve both won vital match tie breaks in the 3rd sets to give us 6-3 overall.
On Sunday we played Cambridgeshire, who were yet to win a match and despite injuries to most of the players we went 4-2 up with wins in the singles from Rhona, Ellie, Hannah and Eden. Katie M had a particularly close match against a strong and experienced number 3 but narrowly lost out in the third set. The doubles pairs of Eden and Hannah, Katie S and Olivia and Kate D with Katie M, all won the first sets. The first to finish was the 1st pair of Eden and Hannah, so Cambridgeshire conceded the 2nd set to our 2nd pair of Katie S and Olivia giving us a 6-3 victory and so we secured 2nd place in the division. This places the team in the top 8 counties in the country which is amazing for such a young team.
Thank you, as always, to Esme Laing for her help and support and to CCLTA for their financial support.
Liz Sweeting (Captain)
