Aegon 9U County Cup - 20th July
Venue - The Shrewsbury Club
Team Captain - Luke Pettit
Players - Stuart Shannon, Harvey Ravenscroft, Ryan Price, Julia Hickman, Isabelle O'Connor, Paulina Jurkowska
We started our match-filled day against North Wales. The boys came up against highly rated players, and although we took a few sets ultimately we started 3-0 down. Our girls managed to level the tie to make it 3-3. So it went into the doubles and mixed. The boys were a few points short in the doubles losing two very close sets. Paulina and Julia managed to grind out a strong win to put us in with a shout in the final mixed decider. Stuart and Isabelle put up a strong fight but we went down 7-5 9-7, meaning we lost 5-4 overall.
We came up against Warwickshire on our second match and we were completely outplayed by a much stronger team going down 9-0, Ryan Price nearly managed to get us a solitary point losing in a 3-set battle.
Next was Staffordshire, another close battle took place. Stuart battled to his first singles win 10-8 7-5, along with Isabelle and Paulina in the singles, meaning again we were 3-3 going into the final matches. Ryan and Stuart lost a tight two set match7-5 8-6, a match that could have swung either way with evenly matched players. Paulina and Julia again pulled another fine doubles win to mean again mixed match decider. This time it was Harvey and Isabelle losing 7-1 10-8, again very tight holding set points in the second just not managing to convert. This meant another tight 5-4 loss.
Our final match was against Shropshire. The Shropshire boys were much too strong and they established a 3-0 lead soon to be 4-0 as Isabelle went down 7-3 7-3. On went Julia, who managed to pull a great 3 set win out of the bag to push the team forwards again, soon to be followed by Paulina winning also. The team suddenly found momentum but sadly both the boys doubles 7-5 and the girls doubles 9-7 losing in the 3rd Shropshire managed to fend us off. Our final match was the mixed which after a hard fought match we came off second best, meaning a 7-2 overall loss.
Overall our team did really well to put up such tight matches against counties who had far higher rated and more experienced players. All players showed some great tactical play, and good levels of behaviour throughout the day. Many thanks to all the parents who travelled and especially Tony Ravenscroft who helped with the on court team talks and training of the players. Our players physically did great lasting 48 total matches!
Our final position was 5th.