A slight increase from 2013 saw 55 hearing impaired children from 4 schools across the North East, take part in their annual tennis tournament held at Tennis World, Middlesbrough on 29th April.
The event organised by Durham and Cleveland LTA and run by John Schofield, is now in its 22nd year and is as popular as ever. This is really emphasised by the fact that Hanson school from Bradford brought 31 children in 3 mini buses. Their trip to Tennis World did however prove eventful when the 3 buses somehow managed to take different routes. One arrived without a problem, one was held up for a while at road works and the third one got completely lost ending up at John’s house in Hartburn, Stockton before realising they’d gone wrong. Injecting Tennis World’s post code into the satnav then eventually did the trick!
After a series of round robin matches, followed by knockout semi-finals, in which all four schools were involved, the 4 group finals ended as follows:
Girls 13&U: Nimra Kauser (Hanson, Bradford) bt Megan Evans (Sandhill, Sunderland) 7-5, 1-7, 7-5
Boys 12&U: Hassan Din (Hanson) bt Awais Mohammed (Hanson) 7-2, 7-0
Girls 13+: Georgia Paul (Hanson) bt Tia Cooke (St Johns,Leeds) 7-2, 7-6
Boys 13+: Peter Wright (St Johns) bt Thomas Chapman (Sandhill) 7-6, 4-7, 7-4