Lincs U18 boys team travelled to Grantham to contest Group 2, the highest group we have been in in recent memory!
Day one: From the practice sessions on Thursday evening it was quite clear that our first day opponent, Surrey, were going to be the toughest tie of the weekend. Up first at seeds 6 and 5 were Ed Colclough and Seb Darke. Ed at 6 won the first set comfortably, but unfortunately his form tailed off somewhat and ended up losing in 3 hard fought sets. Seb at 5 didn't produce his best tennis and comfortably went down to his very strong opponent. Seeds 4 and 3, Sean Hodkin and Andrew Isaac, also had very tough matches. Sean competed well but ultimately lost in straight sets to his very impressive opponent, before Andy put Lincs' first rubber on the board with a fantastic performance, to win in 2 close sets! Joe Woolley at 2, straight off the plane from America, looked in control of his match but again, his very strong opponent fought back to win in 3 sets, whilst at seed 1, Henry Beesley despite fighting back from a set down lost out in another close 3 setter! 5-1 down the tie was over but a good win at second pair doubles from Isaac/Darke, meant Lincs put one more rubber on the board to end up been beaten 7-2.
Day Two: Day two and what turned out to be a quite extraordinary tie against Buckinghamshire. It started brilliantly with easy win at seeds 6,5 and 4, for Colclough, Darke and Hodkin respectively. All the boys played excellent tennis, especially Seb who won 12 straight games to destroy his opponent 61 60!! All was going well! At 3 Andy had a very tough ask against his 'Full-time' opponent and despite fighting valiantly lost in two close sets. Unfortunately Woolley at 2 had 'one of those days' going down easily before Henry Lost in 3 extremely close sets despite looking like winning many times at various points in the match! Onto some of the closest, most tense doubles i have ever seen. At third pair, Isaac/Darke, somehow managed to lose despite being 76 41 up and also 7-2 up in the champs tie-break! 76 67 12-10. Woolley/Colclough managed to scrape through their tie with some inspired tennis at big moments, winning 76 57 10-5. Deciding rubber with Hodkin/Beesley at first pair. An incredibly tight first set went our way before easily losing the second set. The tie was settled by a champs tie-break which despite being ahead, the lads ended up losing with the final score been 67 61 12-10!! Which resulted in a 5-4 final scoreline defeat.
Day Three: A relegation decider against Sussex and what turned out to be even more tense then the previous day! After such a highly strung match against Bucks i feared a bit of a lull from the boys and that appeared to be the case with 3 set losses for Colclough and Darke at 6 and 5. At 4, Hodkin put a vital rubber on the board to give us a chance with a top drawer performance winning in two tight sets. At 3, unlike the previous two days Isaac couldn't find his best form and went down comfortably. Two big wins were needed by Woolley and Beesley at 2 and 1, and things were not looking good with them both losing the first set. Lincs were staring relegation in the face. The fightback though was typical of everything this team have done over the last 5 years, with both lads fighting like mad to both win in 3 sets! 3-3 and another tense round of doubles to decide things. Isaac/Darke at 3 somehow lost the first set from 5-1 up, before winning the second set, also in a tie break. The deciding champs tie-break was somethin that i wont forget in a while. Some great tennis from the Sussex pair put them 9-4 up, 6 match points. From nowhere, it was 9-5, 9-6, 9-7, 9-8, 9-9 before we took the win 67 76 12-10!! An incredible effort!! This left Lincs needing one out of the remaining two doubles to stay up! Woolley/Colclough took a very tight, tense, first set 76, whilst on the court next door, Hodkin/Beesley were 64 up but 4-2 down. By the time Woolley had held serve to go 2-1 up in the second set Sean and Henry had turned the second set around and Sean served out to love to give Lincs the rubber they needed with a 64 64 victory!
The lads this week were absolutely brilliant and represented the county as well as anyone ever has! 5 years ago pretty much this same group of players were in group 5 out of 6. Following 4 successive promotions, 'surviving' in as strong a group 2 as this one is just as good an achievement as all the promotions beforehand! Unfortunately Ed, Seb, Andy and Joe are now out of the age group so this was their last Junior County Cup and they couldn't have performed any better whilst I have been captain. A big ‘Thank You’ goes to Vice-Captain Carly, whos support of the lads is second to none, and all the parents and supporters who were down at Grantham this week, and made the atmosphere over the weekend more like a football match rather then a Team tennis event!
Finally a big Thank you from all the team for the fantastic hospitality from Sarah Patton and her team at Grantham Tennis Centre who did a fantastic job all weekend!
Ed Allinson, 18U Team Manager