Last week saw the National Premiere League Finals taking place at Virgin Active Wearside.
This competition is now in its 11th year, seeing Virgin Active Wearside hosting the competition for second consecutive year. As part of this fantastic competition local children got the opportunity to be on court with some of the best players in Britain, as they took on the very important role as Ball Girls and Boys.
As anyone knows being a Ball Girl or Boy isn’t an easy job and the children taking part were put through their paces prior to the finals with an intensive training session. It was vital due to the high standard of tennis played at this event that every Ball Girl and Boy was trained and ready to deal with every situation.
On Saturday 13th April the NPL Ball Kids had a morning of intensive training lead by Stephanie Eadon, who has recently coached the Barclays Ball Kids at the regional selection days across the North. Using this experience the training session included the ball kids learning the techniques of rolling, throwing and positioning on court. Steph was delighted that local girl Rebecca Richardson was amongst the group at Virgin Active, as she was one of the 30 lucky Ball Kids to be pick for Barclays Ball Kids at the O2 last year. Using her experience and knowledge working with all the other ball kids was amazing and really helped. Steph and the umpires worked closely together to make sure all the ball kids understood the rules and expectations on court.
Sunday 14th April saw 2nd seeds Gosling in the orange t-shirts taking on 4th seeds Virgin Active Cardiff in the red t-shirts to become the winners of the National Premiere League 2013. Knowing the final was going to be full of twist and turns as both teams were playing some exceptional tennis, it was really important that all the ball kids were ready and up to it. All the ball kids were given a Virgin Active ball kid t-shirt sponsored by On Court Magazine. Stephanie said ‘I would like to say a massive thank you to Margie Tweedy of On Court Magazine for sponsoring the ball kids and providing them with a t-shirt. Not only were they professional on court but they all looked the part.’ All 10 ball kids should be very proud of their performance on the day, very professional and organised. Not only was I very proud of them and their watching families, but both team captains mentioned there excellent performance in their post-match speech.
At the end of the day all of the children said they all enjoyed their experience and didn’t want it to end. A number of them are very keen to do something like this again. It is important to remember that although playing tennis is great fun there are so many more opportunities within tennis that you can get involved in and the Virgin Active Ball Kids found this out.
Stephanie would like to thank all the ball kids that volunteered for the NPL Final they were all a credit to themselves and families.