Regional Event
A perfect weekend’s tennis at David Lloyd Basildon resulted in the Essex girl’s team qualifying for the national finals at Bolton in style. 4-0 wins over cambs and Norfolk on day one and beds and Suffolk on day two only dropping 2 sets in 16 matches was a great achievement....
Well done Erica izatt, Olivia Sofroniou,Millie McIlwraith and Emily Carrington.(and Tanisha Schumacher who was on standby as reserve for the weekend) The finals are on the 9-11th July at the national arena in Bolton. Thanks to all the players and their great supporters!
National Finals
A tough draw against Kent (the eventual winners) in the first round was not the best start we could have hoped for, and after some fine tennis in the singles and a near miss in the doubles we lost the match 4-0 and then found ourselves playing Staffs (who we had closely lost third place to in the 2009 u/10 national finals after some creative line calling). We stepped on court knowing what we were up against, and after the first 2 singles the score was level. Millie then had the misfortune of competing against a member of the Staffs 2009 team, the player in question who despite their being a court supervisor on court escaped being warned for appalling behavior. We headed for the doubles 2-1 down and lost 10-8 in a third set championship tie-break that had our name on it!.The dejected team (and Captain!) left the courts at 9pm for an early night…..After a positive team talk at 8.30am on the Sunday the team were fired up and ready to put the miserable Saturday’s events behind them. Our last match of the weekend was to be against local rivals Herts. We started well when Olivia and Erica won their singles, Millie was unlucky to lose her singles, and Olivia and Emily were outplayed in their doubles… the final match of the day to decide the winner was therefore a 10 point Championship tie-break contested by Olivia and Erica. Despite having an early 5-2 lead the girls eventually lost to the more consistent Herts pair.
I would like to thank the team for all of the efforts they put into the weekend, and their parents for the great support they provided for the girls all weekend, and for giving up their time to bring them to Bolton.
Here’s to next year for Millie and Emily and hopefully Olivia and Erica will be involved in the u/14 County Cup experience.
Lynn O’Brien