On the 3rd – 6th July, Eton hosted the Independent Schools Tennis Championships. In the U19 event called the Youll Cup Eton made it all the way to the semi-finals, only to lose narrowly to Millfield, who went on to win the event. Then, from 6th – 9th July the top players were at Queenswood School in Hertfordshire, where the Aegon National British Schools Tennis championships were hosted. In order to qualify for a place amongst the last 16 schools in the country, we had to win our region of the Glanvill Cup, which we did, beating Peter Symonds VIth Form College in the area final.
At the Nationals it went like this:
Tuesday 6th: Beat New Hall school 12 – 0 (to put us in the top 8 half of the draw). Wednesday 7th: Lost to Bournemouth School (West of England tennis academy) 2 – 10. (We were now fighting for 5th – 8th place)
Thursday 8th: Narrowly lost to Millfield 4 – 8 (now playing for 7th or 8th).
Friday 9th: Beat Merchiston College 8 – 2.
So, we came 7th out of the hundreds of schools who entered this tournament (426 to be precise), which is pretty impressive, since this was the first year we entered it.
Reed’s went on to win the Nationals, beating Bournemouth in the finals 8 – 2. Reeds had the no. 1 U16 in the UK and the no. 1 U15 in the UK in their team. Eton’s no. 1, Nihar Navapurkar also beat this Reed’s player (U16 no. 1 in the country) earlier in the season in a match at Eton, both at singles and in doubles. So, all in all a fantastic tennis season, particularly so for the top senior players, but all round as well.
GJP
