This year Nottinghamshire Ladies travelled to South Ribble near Preston to compete in Group 3a. It was one of those years where the teams were all evenly matched and there was everything to play for.
The Friday saw us up against The East of Scotland who we had lost to in the Summer and with a very strong team led by Mhairi Brown who represented Scotland at the Commonwealth Games we knew we had a fight on our hands. Excellent wins by Rebecca Wood making her senior debut and Emelia Box meant that we were holding our own at 2-2 in the early stages. However their very strong top players meant that Sarah Wright faced Mhairi and Isabelle Tyrell, travelling to play for the Friday only, were up against tough opposition. Sarah played really well holding her own in the first set before losing out 6-4. This allowed Mhairi to up her level and took the match. Isabelle put up a strong show against Emma Devine but lost 3-6 1-6 which meant we had to win all 3 doubles to take the match. Sarah Usher and Sarah-Kate O’Grady playing at 3rd pair held on to theirs but the stronger doubles pairing for the East of Scotland meant we lost 6-3 overall.
Day 2 saw the return of Sophia Marks to the team but with the loss of Isabelle and Cheshire also bringing in higher ranked players at 1 and 2 again it looked tough. Rebecca and Emelia again put in fantastic performances to win their matches so again we stood at 2-2. This time Sarah Wright polished off Katie Taylor with a fine 6-4 7-5 win and Sophia made her return to singles with an excellent 6-2 6-1 win over Sam Bolton sending us in to the doubles with a 4-2 lead. With Laura Cooper and Emelia losing their 2nd string doubles we had to take one of the remaining matches. Wins from Sarah Usher and Sarah-Kate and Sophia and Sarah Wright meant we won the match 6-3.
Things were tight going in to the final day and rubbers were so close that it could go either way – which meant we had to win every game we could as there was a possibility for promotion or relegation for all four teams. Playing Durham and Cleveland, Dominique McClean lost on a third set tie break in the first match of the day. However superb performances from the rest of the team and a very impressive win by Sarah-Kate meant that we clinched the match by the end of the singles. This meant if the East of Scotland suffered a hiccup against Cheshire the group win could still be ours. Still on court at 6pm promotion was still open. Unfortunately the hiccup failed to materialise and the East of Scotland took the group with Nottinghamshire a very close second.
Special mention goes to the team who had excellent spirit throughout the weekend and supported each other well. Also a special mention to Emelia who won some very good ratings matches and showed that her tennis had matured a lot in the last 12 months. With Emelia, Dominique and Rebecca now all heading off to American Universities we are looking out for new talent for next year and also hope that there may be some players returning from America to enjoy the County Cup spirit that we are now building.