Girls' U13 AND U15 Doubles Tournament

PE The Girls' U13 tournament was held on Monday 20 May with 20 girls excitedly attending the event. For many of the group this was their first ever experience of a full game of Tennis and everyone left learning so much more about Tennis than when they came.

The group was split into three leagues and then each pair played each other within their league to produce a final league of all of the group winners. Georgia Summerfield and Freya Stewart made it through to this final group to play against tournament favourites Lucy Cottam and Samaira Bajaj and Bea Amos and Ria Gupta.

The finals league was dominated by the more experienced Lucy and Samaira who came out tournament winners not dropping any game at all throughout the evening. There was a play off for fourth, fifth and sixth place which was also fiercely contested with fourth place going to Jess Daniels and Francesca Jones, closely followed by Jess Richardson and Harriet Templeman with Caoimhe Healey and Jessie Desborough coming sixth.

The final league was contested with the excited beginner group of Natalia Borowiak and Lily-Anna Teillant, Anoushka Bartram and Eloise Boyce and Immie Turner and Divyana Patel.  It was a wonderful evening and there was a lot of laughter throughout.

The boys had fewer entry numbers which is very surprising, despite this there was a dominant pairing in Rohan Lesiw and Ted Mylchreest who swept all other competitors away. The U15 Girls event was equally as popular as the U13s and proved to be a very close affair with all pairings playing the best tennis I have ever seen.

U15’s play across the whole event. Kiki Timmins and Honor Moore deserve a special mention as they have both shown so much improvement since Year 7 in terms of their rallying consistency and choice of shot. The event was very close but the power and competitive determination of the two Year 7 girls pulled them through to the final to face the defending champions of three years Shiksha Kaur and Poppy Mclearnon.

This was the expected showdown of the newcomers and the experienced and coolly composed Year 10 girls. Samaira had been tormenting opponents all week with her wonderful combination of power and brave aggressive placement but this time it was matched by Poppy and an inspired Shiksha who was volleying as though her life depended on it. Despite all the best efforts of Lucy and Samaira the communication and extra expertise under pressure of the Year 10’s paid off and they won 6-1.

Then the fight was on for the third place position between Honor and Kiki and Hamsini Raja and Hannah Simpson but in the last game Honor and Kiki found their rhythm together and managed to get the win. Fifth place was taken by Alice Barratt and Samyutha Puppala with the final position being given to Aleena Malik and Eloise Hull. Their game was very close and had to be decided by an extra singles game between Aleena and Alice.

Superb display by all girls and I am super proud of them all. 

Reporting by Miss Bowtell