10U Boys Regional Qualifying Event
On bright sunny morning in Kent the Surrey 10U Boys County Cup team attempted to qualify for the National Finals in Bolton. With Mukhtar Andu, Finn Doyle, Raffaello Papajcik and George Shields both Dave Cox and myself felt we had a strong team and a good chance of qualifying but it was going to be tough with Sussex and Hampshire in our round robin box.
The first match for the Surrey team was against Sussex. After singles victories by the boys the doubles victory was formality and a comprehensive 8-0 win got the team off to a winning start. Full of confidence the team played just as well and beat Hampshire by the same score. Like last year the team topped the group and would come back on Sunday to play Kent in the semi finals.
With another bright sunny day Surrey set about trying to beat Kent and make the final for the sixth straight year. The Surrey team started brightly, with Finn, Raffaello and Mukhtar all playing some fantastic tennis to beat the Kent in all 3 singles matches. With Finn and George narrowly losing the doubles on a match tie-break, the team was safely into the final where they would play Sussex again.
With solid wins by Finn and Mukhtar in the singles Raffaello needed to beat the Sussex number one to book the team's place at Bolton. This was a very tense match with the boys playing some great tennis, and again like the round robin match this match too would be decided by a match tiebreak. This time the Sussex number one had his revenge and with the tie poised at 4-2 the doubles would need to be won to see the team over the finishing line. Despite his defeat in the singles Raffaello was up for playing the doubles with Mukhtar. The boys got off to a great start and won the first set 4-1 with the momentum of the first set under their belt the boys finished off the job with a 5-3 win in the second set to put the team into the National Finals at Bolton.
10U Boys National Finals
With the format similar to the regional event the team would have to win their round robin box to make it to the final. With Avon, Shropshire and Hertfordshire in our box this was not going to be an easy task. We kicked off by playing Avon on the Saturday and after the 3 singles we were 2-1 up with a live doubles to be played. After a tense match the boys played some great tennis to beat Avon in the 3rd set. We then played a very tough Shropshire team and again found ourselves in a tough doubles deciding match, again it went all the way to a 3rd set, again the boys played some tactically sound doubles and won 10-3. The team came back on Sunday morning knowing that a win against Hertfordshire would see the team to the final. Playing with confidence the team raced through the singles winning all 3 thus sending the team to the final where they would play Warwickshire.
This was a fantastic tussle by the two strongest teams in the event. Warwickshire started strongly by winning the opening singles but Surrey quickly wrestled back the tie and were leading 4-2 after the singles. With it all to play for in the doubles Warwickshire got off to an early lead and won the first set 4-1, the boys re-grouped and the 2nd set was a hard fought but Warwickshire won it by 5-3. In doing so they set-up a 10-point championship tie-break to decide the 10U County Cup winners. With the momentum of the doubles the championship tie-break proved to be a match too far for the team and Warwickshire won the tie-break and the Aegon Boys 10U County Cup 2014.
Both Dave Cox and myself could not have been more proud of the team over both events as the boys gave it their all.
David Lovejoy
Surrey Boys 10U Team Captain