The National Finals were held from 13th – 15th May at Nottingham Tennis Centre.
Hampshire & IOW 14U Boys team got off to a very unfortunate start when, due to a family tragedy, Outek and Ouyoung Dinapala were unable to make the trip. All our thoughts are with the family at this time.
The travelling team was in ranking order: Ryan Golesworthy, Henry Bowden, Cameron Clarke, Alex Ellison
Team Captains: Mike Booth and Karim Aouichaoui
Our first match was against Hertfordshire, Alex got us off to a great start with a win at number 4 singles but, unfortunately, we took losses at 1, 2 and 3. Ryan and Cameron won at doubles 1 but we lost the second doubles. We took a 2 – 4 loss overall.
Next up was Leicestershire, the singles was a reverse of the previous match with wins at 1, 2 and 3, but a loss at 4, giving us a 3-1 lead going into the doubles. Ryan played with Alex at 1 and were well beaten but a win for Cameron and Henry at 2 gave us a fantastic 4 – 2 victory.
Our next match was against a very strong Surrey team. Unfortunately they were too strong from top to bottom and beat us 6 – 0. This left us at 4th in our group which was unfortunate as we did have a very good win to our name.
On the final day we were up against a strengthened team from Cambridgeshire. After the singles we were level at 2 – 2 with wins for Henry and Cameron. For the doubles we put Cameron and Alex at 2 and Ryan and Henry at 1, both pairs had great wins to give us a 4 – 2 win.
Over the course of the weekend we won 2 and lost 2 but actually came 7th which was a little tough on the boys, who I thought did really well. Each had had to play 8 matches over the three days and all gave 100% effort for all the matches
Mike Booth, Team Captain