The Association of Colleges (AOC) tennis regional qualification round took place at the Tarka Tennis Centre in November 2016 with local colleges taking part in a singles competition to find the top 3 boys and girls from the region to represent the South West at the National event in April 2017. Devon players dominated in the final team selection with Beth Nash, Lucy Gill, Ben Greatrex and Fred James taking 4 of the 6 places.
Nottingham University hosted the national sporting event for college teams from each region with the highest level of students across all sports coming together for 3 days of intense sporting activity. Expectations were high for the South West team who had won the all-round competition for 7 out of the last 8 years and the team were hoping to retain the prestigious “Wilkinson Sword” once again.
Nottingham Tennis Centre was the host venue for the tennis event where the SW team hoped to make an impact up against the other regions in singles, doubles and mixed matches.
Team SW were in “Pool B” with East (E), North East (NE), Wales (W) and Yorkshire & Humber (Y&H). The team battled hard against the other 4 regions with some very close matches taking place, often won & lost by just a single point at times. The team ended up in 3rd place in the pool after losing to Y&H and the E team. They won 2 out of their 4 matches in the group beating W & NE but Y&H and E won 3 out of the 4 matches and went through to the semi-finals leaving Team SW to compete for 5th – 8th positions overall.
Team SW were up against North East (NE) again along with the West Midlands (WM). The team got off to a great start with a win against WM followed up by a win against the NE…this was then followed on by the final tie of the weekend which was up against the North West (NW) for 5th & 6th overall.
Tied at 2-2, the mixed doubles was left to decide which region would take 5th overall. Team SW tried everything they could to make an impact against a very strong mixed pairing from the NW but were unable to get the win, finishing in 6th position.
Team Captain Steve Ashton said “It was a real honour to captain the SW team at the National event…the team battled hard all weekend and it came down to a key few moments here and there that made the difference in the end”
In the overall standings in all sports at the end of the weekend the SW team just missed out on retaining the “Wilkinson Sword” by a few points to the team from the South East (SE)