Great Britain 14U Team - (L-R) Jazzi Plews, Maia Lumsden, Gabriella Taylor and Team Captain Helen Reesby
The 14U Great Britain girls’ team has finished as runners-up at the ITF World Junior Tennis Finals in Prostejov, Czech Republic whilst the 14U boys finish in eleventh place.
The team, consisting of Gaby Taylor; Jazzi Plews and Maia Lumsden and captained by Helen Reesby, maintained an unbeaten record all week to reach Saturday's final for the first time since 2008, when Laura Robson featured in the squad.
The Great Britain team faced a strong Slovak Republic team for the title after the latter had knocked out top seeds USA in the semi-finals
In a closely contested final Great Britain were defeated 2-1.
The first rubber saw Plews defeated 7-6, 4-6, 7-5 by Tereza Mihalikova (SVK) in an epic three hour match.
Next up was Taylor who was looking for revenge over Victoria Kuzmova, a player she had lost to just a month ago. The Briton went on to claim a 6-1, 6-4 victory in ther singles rubber to level the contest and send it into a deciding doubles rubber.
Lumsden and Plews then paired up in the doubles but were eventually beaten 6-2, 7-5 to draw to a close an encouraging week for the British juniors.
Sixteen boys’ and sixteen girls’ teams, from a total of 26 countries, had previously fought their way through tough regional qualifying competitions for the chance to compete in the Finals.
The event beganwith a round-robin competition, with teams divided into four groups of four teams. The winner of each group then qualified for the semi-finals, while the remaining nations went into play-offs. The likes of Justine Henin; Kim Clijsters; Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick have all previously played in the competition.
Great Britain raced through their round-robin group defeating Thailand; Peru and Canada without losing a match, which resulted in them facing Germany in the semi-finals on Thursday who they narrowly defeated 2-1.
Meanwhile Great Britain 14U boys finished in eleventh position after easily defeating Chile in their play-off match. Daniel Bennett and Jay Clarke both won their singles matches, for a loss of only six games combined, to seal victory. The doubles was not played.
The GB team, captained by Richard Plews, finished third in their group which included top seeds and pre-tournament favourites USA, Switzerland and Chinese Taipei.
To keep up to date with the event visit the official ITF website.