Last Saturday saw teams from nine counties head to Corby for the annual Kevin Hoey Memorial Mini Orange Festival of Tennis. A huge congratulations to our players Ben, Alex, Theo and Erin and to team captain Andre Mouskides for another brilliant win for Hertfordshire and some outstanding tennis.
Our thanks also go to organiser and referee Craig Howarth who reported ‘We had a fantastic day of team tennis on Saturday, with 36 children (28 of them Orange 1*’s, 8 x Orange 1’s) taking part in over 80 matches, of what was an excellent level of tennis and extremely good conduct from the players and parents. I would like to thank all the captains for their co-operation and help throughout the day, as they helped enormously to make it run so smoothly. It was a pleasure to referee the day, and to receive so many thanks from players and parents for the days tennis, and how the event was run. All the results will be on League Planner by the end of the week.
Over the course of the day every child played 5 matches - 4 singles matches, and 1 doubles match, with the singles being best of 3 x tie-break sets and the friendly doubles was 1 x championship tie-break. Deserving of a special mention are the four players who were undefeated in all their matches – these were Oliver Brooker (Essex No1), Alex McKenzie (Herts no2), Theo McIlvenna (Herts No3), and Erin Pearce (Herts No4). Another 11 players lost just once all day.
There were 3 boxes of 3 Counties, with 4 players in each team. Phase 1 resulted in 1st place in each group for Herts, Yorks and Essex. Second placed were Beds, Northants & Cambs. Third placed were Bucks, Here & Worcs, and Notts. During the interval, both to give the players some fun and to give me time to get Phase 2 organised, we set up some doubles, which went down well with the players.
Phase 2 was also 3 boxes of 3 counties, depending on where the teams finished in their groups in Phase 1. In the Konta group (3rd placed) Here & Worcs secured 7th place, Notts 8th and Bucks 9th spot. In the Williams group of 2nd placed teams, we had Northants winning to take 4th place, with Cambs close behind in 5th and Beds taking 6th spot. In the top group, it was strength in depth that saw the title go to Hertfordshire. Essex put up a good fight winning at No1, and losing in 3 sets at No2, but ultimately the strength of the Herts team proved too strong and they won all their matches either 3-1 or 4-0. Yorkshire pipped Northants by just 1 tie-break to secure a place in the top group but went down 1-3 to both Essex and champions Herts.
Final Positions:- 1. Herts, 2. Essex, 3. Yorks, 4. Northants, 5. Cambs, 6. Beds, 7. Here & Worcs, 8. Notts, 9. Bucks.’