4 Secondary Schools in Sunderland took part in a new tennis event at Sunderland Tennis Centre on 8 December, and loved it!
The schools were invited to bring 4 Year 8 players (2 girls and 2 boys), and a teacher, to make up a 5 player team. The event was aimed at players who hadn’t played a lot of tennis competition before, but have a love of the sport, and wanted to try out a new, social, fun, team experience!
The format was loosely based on the International Premier Tennis League which is taking place in parts of Asia right now with professional players such as Serena Williams, Heather Watson and Rafa Nadal (http://www.iptlworld.com/). It’s a team event with both singles matches and doubles matches played counting towards your team’s overall score. Even the teachers took part against each other, while their students watched and cheered them on!
As in the professional version of the league, the matches were all quick (timed 25 minute matches), and if you weren’t playing at that time, you were actively watching on the side lines and cheering on your team mates. There were also a few fun rules thrown in for good measure – a ‘power point’ was played each match, where a whistle was blown at some point during the 25 minutes, meaning the player who won the next point won the whole game! It gave players who were behind in the match a great chance of coming back and challenging for the match.
Music was played throughout the day; the playlist courtesy of some of the tennis apprentices at the Centre, and of course included some obligatory Christmas music! The event was supported by free resources from the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), as part of its Junior Team Challenge competition pack.
The format of the event meant that there were some extremely close matches and a close final result! But in the end, Biddick Academy managed to scrape through as winners of this first event. Farringdon, Southmoor and Oxclose Schools have vowed to come back next year for their revenge though!
Thanks must be paid to Graham Fowler and his helpers at the Centre for putting the event on. If you’re interested in how you can get involved in the next event of this kind, please get in touch at North@lta.org.uk.