Congratulations to the U12 Girls County Cup 2015 team consisting of Dalanda Bah, MJ Changwereza, Sally Pethybridge and Hattie Vanneman for taking third place in the National finals at Bolton this weekend.
After the qualifying event in Sussex, with Victoria Subev as part of the qualifying team, where the girls beat Hampshire & IOW, Kent, Dorset and Sussex, in beautiful sunny weather, the U12 Surrey Girls team qualified for Bolton with the loss of only one live rubber.
The four girls arrived in Bolton to a very strong line up of counties and a very demanding round robin box consisting of Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Cambridge. All matches needed to be won to come first in the box to play off for first place on Sunday against the other box of counties.
Warwickshire were our first opponent. Dalanda played three and despite a good comeback in the second set we went one rubber down. MJ and Sally played great singles and we went into the doubles with a lot of confidence and took the match 3 rubbers to 1.
After a fun night at Nandos we were up early Saturday morning to practice with two matches to play. First up was Cambridgeshire who Hattie, MJ and Sally managed to dismantle well, finishing with a strong doubles line up of MJ and Sally who played excellently to help take the match 4-0.
Then we had the toughest team in our box – Wiltshire – who we were playing for a place in the final. Hattie played a good match against an experienced number three who made very few mistakes and she lost the match. MJ fought really hard and played exceptionally well to keep us in with a chance - 1 all. Sally was up against another very experienced player in the Wiltshire number 1 and although she tried absolutely everything she lost the match but showed a great fighting spirit.
Hopefully, we thought, our doubles team would be strong and work hard and play together to force the match into a doubles shoot out and give us another chance. The girls played really decisive doubles and won the match 5-3, 5-3 and so we were into a shoot-out at 7.00 pm having started playing at 9.00 a.m. earlier in the day. Everybody was tired but Sally and MJ rallied well and the tie break started very equally until 5 all when, unfortunately for us the Wiltshire girls played superbly and never really missed a ball. They took the tie break and the match 10-5. Although the girls were disappointed they had given all they possibly could and we had still another match in the morning to take third and a medal.
So after a nice dinner and good night’s sleep we were on court at 8.00 a.m.practising with a third fourth play-off match against Hertfordshire
Our singles players Hattie, MJ and Sally were not to be thwarted. They all played extremely well with Sally and Hattie only losing only one game between them and MJ contesting a tricky opponent we took all three singles giving us third place. Dalanda and MJ then played a superb doubles to cement the win.
Many many congratulations to the members of our team. Their commitment, dedication and professionalism during both tough weekends was outstanding. Many thanks must also go to Chris Tucker, our team coach and Chris Risebro for all the help in the office
The girls must be proud of their achievement and we hope it goes on to inspire them for the future.
Penny Batchelor
U12 Girls Team Captain
13.7.15