I was extremely lucky to be called up to captain the under 14 girls’ team in the county finals at Nottingham. The event consisted of the top 8 counties across the country, Lancashire being one of them. Each county was put into a round robin box of 4 and played against each other over the first 2 days. Our box did seem incredibly strong and we were up against in in the first couple of matches.
Our first match was against Kent, they had higher rated and older players than ours so we had everything to go for and nothing to lose. Although we had some very close matches the luck just wasn’t on our side and we went down 6-0 to a very strong Kent team.
Our weekend wasn’t about to get any easier as we went on to play against Surrey. Our girls didn’t go down without a fight and gave everything they had but again experience came through and we lost 6-0. Although the girls hadn’t yet won a match the team spirit was high and they weren’t disheartened at all. We were ready for our next opponents and confident that we could come away with a win. No match at this level was going to be easy, we had some good wins and went on to win 5-1 against Hampshire & IOW.
Lancashire finished 3rd in their box which meant on the final day we were playing against Avon for 5th & 6th place. Lancashire stormed ahead after the singles with a 4-0 lead and also went on to win both doubles. Lancashire finished a very creditable 5th place overall.
Well done to the Lancashire team, they were a credit to their county and I wish them luck in the season ahead.
Janelle Brooks