On the first bank holiday weekend in May Lincolnshire's top 14U girls took part in the County Cup. We often have a venue where we have a long trip but this particular week end we were only in Lincoln at the Eastgate club. The team was Jessica Jackson, Dana Kenneally Forrester, Victoria Beardsley, Rosie Thomas and Nicole Hagan.
The format is a little odd and Saturday our first day, only saw us play the doubles part of our match with Sussex. Sussex had played all day and their team were well warmed up as we started to play the doubles. This however was no excuse as we went down in both the doubles having come up against a very strong team. Sussex it turned out was the strongest team in the group.
That was it for the first day. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express near by. A trip out to Nandos and then back early to get to bed to prepare for a far busier day on Sunday.
The singles against Sussex were not much better. We lost all 4 singles without getting more than 2 games in any set.
The other team in our box of 3 teams was Norfolk. Fortunately in this match the roles were reversed and Lincs were the dominant force. We beat Norfolk 5-1. Seeming easy but 3 of our 5 wins were in 3 sets. Well done to Jessica and Victoria for grinding out long 3 setters and to Dana and Rosie who won in 2 sets!
This meant that Lincs had finished 2nd in our group and would play off against the 2nd placed in the other group on the Monday.
3rd and 4th play- off saw us matched against Herts! Herts had only narrowly lost to Cambridgeshire on a tie break shoot out the previous day. Again it seemed that we were a little out-gunned and went 3-0 down in the singles. Dana's opponent suffered an injury and pulled out making the score 3-1 so technically we could still force a tie break shoot out with two doubles wins. However Herts were still too strong and we lost the number 2 doubles and Herts then conceded the top doubles in order to get on the road early.
Lincolnshire finished 4th out of 6 which was respectable yet unexciting finish for the weekend. Jessica and Dana at the top of the order had some difficult matches and accounted for themselves well and Victoria and Rosie (both still 12U) made a good start to 14U County Cup and show good potential for the next couple of years. Unfortunately Nicole didn't get to play too much tennis over the weekend but was excellent support throughout the event!!
Dave Williams