Team: Edie Witcombe, Flora Davies, Emma Abel, Alfie Clarkson, Taylor Elliott, Harry Bell, Will Cross,
Captain: Adam Charlton
On Saturday 13th August I once again had the pleasure of captaining the mini orange team at the regional county cup held at Grantham Tennis Club. We lined up against our opponents from Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire.
Our first match pitted us against Northamptonshire who on paper matched up very closely with us. Leicestershire got off to a flying start with hard fought victories from Taylor and Harry. Alfie then turned around the loss of his first set to increase Leicestershire's lead. Edie and Emma then produced superb displays to put us into an unassailable 5-1 lead after the singles.
The match was rounded off with a great doubles win for Flora and Emma to make the overall match result 6-3 to Leicestershire.
Up next was Nottinghamshire who had also enjoyed a 6-3 victory in their opening fixture. Nottinghamshire boasted a formidable line up on the girls side and despite some incredible battling they proved too strong for our girls. On the boys side Taylor won comfortably before Alfie fought back again to win in 3 sets showing great qualities to overcome some tough challenges. Will then had an epic singles match with arguably Nottinghamshire's best player which he was sadly edged out of in the third set. This meant that we were 4-2 down heading into the doubles. Harry and Alfie wrapped up a comfortable doubles win and were followed by Edie and Taylor winning in straight sets in the mixed doubles. Once again though Nottinghamshire showed their power winning the deciding girls doubles match.
Overall result 5-4 to Nottinghamshire.
This meant that we headed into the final match against Lincolnshire knowing that we need a win to guarantee second place or hopefully a win from Northamptonshire over Nottinghamshire to give us a chance at winning.
Northamptonshire opened the door for us by taking a lead during their singles, unfortunately we couldn't walk through it and found ourselves out of the running after being 5-1 down after the singles. This was despite a great performance from Will winning his singles. The matches did finish on a high with Edie and Harry dominating their mixed doubles to make the score
7-2 to Lincolnshire in the end.
In the other match Northamptonshire went on to complete a nail biting 5-4 victory over Nottinghamshire meaning that two teams Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire finish level on both match and rubber points for 1st and ourselves and Northamptonshire finishing level on both match and rubber points for 3rd. This meant that due to the head to head rule the teams finished 1st Nottinghamshire, 2nd Lincolnshire, 3rd Leicestershire, 4th Northamptonshire.
As a team all the players showed amazing effort and commitment. No one gave up and with a few more close matches going our way we could have definitely ended up as winners of what turned out to be a very close competition.
Thank you to the players and their parents for your help and support.
Adam Charlton
9U Captain