Coaches Report: Girls U10 County Cup @ Taunton
We arrived at Taunton on Saturday to find 6 excited girls ready to compete at County Cup! We had a great warm up session, with the girls leading their physical warm up and then got going with Lauren leading the racket warm up and focusing their minds on the weekend of tennis! Elly attended the Captains meeting, and after a short team chat, everyone was raring to go!
First up to play was our 3 & 4, Emilia and Eleanor against Devon, but went on and quickly got Avon our first 2 wins! They were followed by Emma and Eloise who did the same! We were straight back on court for the singles against Cornwall. This time Anya stepped in at 4 for her County Cup debut and Eleanor at 3, both following suit and getting wins for Avon! Emma and Eloise continued with 2 more wins at 1 & 2! A great morning of singles before a quick break. There is plenty of space at Taunton for games so the girls ate food, took care of business and also had some fun!
We started the afternoon with 2 doubles wins against Devon, Eloise & Emilia, and Eleanor playing with Sofia, who was also making her County Cup debut! Quickly following this, our doubles pairs were against Cornwall. Both got a win and Eloise and Anya had to battle it to win both their sets on tie breaks. Great to see the girls pull out the win in a tighter match.
A successful Saturday. The girls went home buzzing and ready to get some rest for day 2. We started Sunday with a good warm up. More volley based drills because we were keen for all the girls to be more confident at the net today in their doubles. The goal for today, was to work on taking initiative to be prepared for matches, to know when they were going on, to have everything ready and themselves ready for Matchplay even when there were breaks.
The girls came out so focused and on top form. Emilia and Eleanor out first and with 2 wins against Somerset, followed by 2 more singles victories from Emma and Eloise. The girls were straight back on court for the singles against Wiltshire, who were the stronger opponents over the weekend. Again Emilia and Eleanor professionally went about business winning both singles at 3 & 4 before Emma and Eloise did the same. This meant we had won overall, but the girls remained focused on the doubles task. There was a lengthy break so after some food the girls got on court for some more doubles work, working with their partners for the afternoon and then watching Somerset and Cornwall battle out a shoot out so that they knew when they needed to get ready for their matches!
Sofia and Anya played 2 doubles and got the win against Somerset before Eloise and Emilia did the same at 1. Emilia and Anya then got the 2 doubles win against Wiltshire and Eleanor and Emma got the final win of the weekend.
The girls didn’t drop a set, respected their opponents, remained focused, had lots of fun, worked on their goals and really came together as a team. What a great group of U10 girls! We are really excited to watch them ramp it up in the highly competitive nationals at Bath in a few weekends time!
A brilliant team effort and a big thank you to a great group of parents for letting the girls play, learn and supporting them positively throughout.
And now for 10U Boys …
Great tennis play, brilliant bounce back from disappointment and excellent journalism with your report boys.
10U Boys Report by Sebby
Sebby’s Champs Report
On Saturday our first matches were against the Channel Islands. Thomas won his match, Archie lost his I won mine and so did Freddie. We had a quick break where all the boys played champs on the ping pong table.
Then we had the doubles matches where me and Alistair won ours and so did Freddie and Thomas. We played around off the courts for a long time.
We then played Cornwall and the order was in reverse for Cornwall. It was annoying because 1 played 4, 2 played 3, 3 played 2 and 4 played 1. We won it in the end.
On Sunday I was the only one who won a match, but both the doubles were close. After that, we played champs for an hour and a bit and we also made nicknames for people like Archibellabold and Frederico. After that we had to go. In the end, we all played really well and it was a great learning experience.