The H&W Aegon County Cup 10U Boys played at Stourbridge - May 31st & June 1st 2014
The H&W Captain: Tony Ravenscroft
Team: Stuart Shannon, Harvey Ravenscroft, Oliver Dando and Sam Rayner.
The weekend of competition started off with a victory for the H&W boys. We took on Staffordshire and Oliver Dando comfortably beat Staffs no.3 Oliver Lawrence 4-1, 4-0. The other 2 singles went to the wire, Harvey Ravenscroft just lost out to Staffs no.2 Jack Benton 0-4, 4-0, (10-7) and Stuart Shannon just did enough to beat Staffs no.1 Solomon Shahar 0-4, 4-1, (10-8).
We were 2-1 to the good after the singles and needed a solid doubles performance to secure the victory. Stuart Shannon and Harvey Ravenscroft stepped up with a solid 2 sets to take the match 4-1, 4-0.
We knew the rest of the weekend would get tougher with some strong opponents. South Wales proved too strong and we lost 4-0.
This left us in 3rd position at the end of the first day. Our first match on Sunday was against North Wales. Stuart and Harvey both lost their singles and Oliver fought hard in a close match to keep us in with a chance of winning, he beat Ben Purcell 4-2, 5-3.
We needed a doubles win to secure the draw and Stuart and Harvey once against proved too strong in the doubles beating Ben Purcell and Oliver Critchell 4-1, 4-1.
The final match was against Shropshire, who finished top. The players put up a good fight against players ranked much higher, Stuart lost to Roan Jones, 4-0, 4-2, Harvey lost to Rory McDonald-O’Brien 4-2, 4-1 and Oliver lost to Matthew Campbell 4-0, 4-2. Oliver Dando and Samuel Rayner paired up in the doubles and lost to Tomas Cores Birch and Matthew Campbell 4-1, 4-0.
The H&W players played some excellent tennis and finished level on points with North Wales in 3rd place. We had just one less rubber win than North Wales which put us in 4th place after the final day.
It was great to see the team supporting each other, the team spirit was excellent from the players and parents.