Girls Captains Report – Coach Lizzie Flint

It was an extremely tough few days for our U12 girls’ team at the National Finals up in Nottingham last weekend. Olivia, Febe, Kadie, Connie, Ava and Daisy were all up against it, facing some of the very best players in the country. Friday and Saturday we competed in our box against Surrey, Yorkshire and Suffolk, and whilst there were certainly games where we held our own, the standard was simply too good and we only managed to cross the line once to win a rubber.

But not to be disheartened, the girls kept their belief, dusted the first two days off and on Sunday walked out on the courts with a completely different mindset. After a focused warm-up from captain Pete, the girls were pumped and ready to take on Herefordshire and Worcestershire for the final day of play. And boy did they perform well. Coming away with a 4-2 victory and an overall 7th position it was a brilliant way to end our event.

The weekend was a perfect opportunity for our U12’s to see how the top level really play, not only the girls side, but the boys too, in particular witnessing some very entertaining and high quality doubles matches.

It was clear that doubles is a huge part of the stronger counties’ performance curriculum and an area where we as a team can certainly improve. 

On reflection, our U12 county cup this year, both qualifying and main draw, has been more than just tennis. The sport can, on a lot of occasions be a very individual and a lonely experience, but this was truly a team event. The girls togetherness on and off the court was amazing to watch – being supportive, kind and helpful to one another throughout. The mix of personalities made for a truly fantastic team who were united in both wins and defeats – captains Pete and Lizzie have loved every minute with them. Well done girls!

Boys ‘Captains’ Report – Player Will P

There is no doubt that everything about the Finals was bigger, better and tougher!

  • More time off school (200% more)
  • Longer journey in the fun bus (just about, unless you don’t count the Devon traffic)
  • More dinners out (3 vs 2 – double the chance for me to have a haloumi burger)
  • More chances for us to lose our room cards (luckily, we didn’t – much)
  • And a huge challenge for our tennis.

We had three teams in our group to play before the final day of placings – would we be able to beat our 7th place that we’d managed as U11s? Read on to find out.

First up was Yorkshire – a great team and a bit daunting! We played very well in the singles to take it to 2-2, but then we lost two unlucky doubles matches, losing the tie 4-2. We had played very well though, almost taking one of the favourites to a shootout, which was an encouraging sign for the days to come. For dinner we went to a steakhouse, went 12 pounds over budget with all the meat (haloumi for me), and then headed back for an early (ish) night – big day tomorrow!

Then Surrey – the greatest challenge in our group with lots of close matches that aren’t seen in the scores. Everyone took at least a game off their opponent, but we lost all four singles. Surrey may have been resting on their laurels, but they hadn’t counted on our doubles, where we played well including a tight match tiebreak, eventually losing, but with lots of cheering on from the sidelines. The parents voted that their favourite close match so far according to my Mum after watching the Girls No.1 and No.11 have an amazing match the night before…

Finally, we had North of Scotland – a hotly-fought contest ending 3-3, although Ollie was injured for the rest of the tournament and unlucky to just lose his singles in a tie break – we had a shoot-out to play! But, as the lights literally went out on us in the tennis centre, we had to come back on Sunday to play this. Off we had to go to dinner and bed, nervous about the day to come. Matt promised us pudding if we’d win it the next day – we ate the pudding and hoped we’d keep our end of the bargain!! (and I had something that wasn’t a halloumi burger – cannelloni – yum!)

And Tobi and Dan did us proud at 9am the next day. There was so much cheering on both sides as they battled to win the shoot-out 10-8. Tobi said afterwards that he was shaking as he served – nerves of steel from both of them to play through the pressure.

That was it from the groups; we were playing for fifth and sixth! We had got out (mostly) unscathed (apart from Frostie), and we would be playing Warwickshire for fifth. We went 3-1 down after the singles – those boys were giants – what is in the water up there? Tobi beat a very strong player in a match tiebreak as our new no.1, which kept us just about in it – it all came down to the doubles. Will Burrows and I lost 4-2 4-2 in a great match (“pump and spin boys!”) which meant we were out of 5th place, but we still had a match to go. We lost it in another match tiebreak that could have gone either way, making the eventual score 5-1 to them – it could just have easily been 3-3 though! Next time…

6th place is great! Compared to U11s here are a few stats – we managed 33% of sets won in the group stage vs 21% last year and 40% of games vs 32% last year. We all had a great time this county cup finals – thanks to Matt and Ollie for making it such a great weekend!