Aegon County Cup 12U Boys – Wrexham 28th & 29th June 2014
Team: Felix Gill, Harry Friend, Joshua Turner, Luke Pycock
The weekend of matches started indoors due to the rain and it turned out to be our toughest match against Staffordshire. We had some close tie-break matches but lost out and the match finished 8-0 to Staffordshire. Josh Turner lost to Oliver George Davis 4-0, 4-1. Harry Friend lost to Rohan Thawait 5-4, 4-1, Felix Gill lost to Harrison Birch 5-4, 4-2 and Luke Pycock & Joshua Turner lost to Harrison Birch and Oliver George Davies 4-1, 4-2.
The next tie was against North Wales. Felix Gill had a tough match against their number 1 Sam Morris and lost 4-1, 4-1, Harry Friend and Josh Turner dominated their singles winning 4-0, 4-0 and 4-2, 4-0 respectively.
The doubles was played on the Sunday and Felix and Harry had a convincing victory 4-1, 4-1 to win the tie 6-2.
The final day was an interesting one with 4 teams including H&W in with a chance of finishing top.
We had to defeat South Wales and Shropshire. We first took on South Wales and Josh Turner was determined to get us off to good start beating their number 3 Jack Ryan 2-4, 4-2 (10-1). Harry Friend lost out to Danny Flynn 5-3, 5-4 and Felix Gill lost to Alexander Hamer 4-2, 5-4. After some close tie-breaks Felix and Harry were pumped up for the doubles and needed the win to bring the score to 4-4 in the tie. The boys played some excellent doubles beating Henry Muxworthy and Louis Zwart 5-3, 4-1 to secure the draw.
The tie against Shropshire went the same way with Josh Turner keeping us in the match beating William Abbatt 5-4, 0-4 (11-9). Felix and Harry lost their singles but we were 2-1 down and still in with a chance if we could win the doubles. Felix and Harry were unbeaten in doubles so far during the weekend and they needed to be at their best to beat Thomas Loxley and Dominic Robinson. The H&W boys lost the first set 4-1 but fought back to win the second set 4-2 and the championship tie-break 10-4 to level the score to 4-4.
There were just 2 match tie-breaks to play to decide who would finish in top spot. Felix and Harry were unbeaten but couldn’t quite hold onto this record in the match tie-breaks. They gave their all in 2 tight tie-breaks just losing out in both 11-9 to South Wales and 11-9 to Shropshire.
All the boys had a great weekend of competition and although we finished 4th they can hold their heads up high knowing they were only a few points away from 1st place.
Tony Ravenscroft – Captain