The Under 9 (orange ball) county cup took place at Gosling Tennis Centre on 17th July 2010. The team of Finlay Barrett, Daniel Dean, Matthew Blood, Indu Ragunather, Lauren Armstrong and Maddy Weir were raring to go after 3 good weeks of training together, and so confidence was high on arrival at the event.
 
Bucks were placed in a group alongside Herts, Berks, Oxfordshire and Essex. The first match was against Berkshire and produced some very positive performances; especially from the boys who won all their opening singles matches. With Lauren managing to win her singles as well it meant that, going into the doubles, we only needed one more win to secure a victory. With wins in both the boys and the girls doubles it meant a great start to the competition for Bucks!
 
The second round of matches put us against what would prove to be the toughest team in the group - Herts. Finlay's and Lauren's impressive singles wins were the highlights of what was otherwise a disappointing result overall, despite a great attitude shown by all the players.
 
At the halfway stage of the day, the decision was made to alter the doubles pairings for the final 2 rounds of matches. As it turned out, this worked to Bucks advantage as the team started to play their best tennis of the day.
 
The next fixture against Essex was arguably the hardest fought of all. Daniel narrowly lost a memorable 3-setter in the singles but displayed fantastic durability, which continued in his mixed doubles match with Lauren that they deservedly won. Indu put her morning defeats behind her with her performance of the day in the singles, and then paired up to great effect with Maddy to win the girls doubles too.
 Unfortunately defeat elsewhere meant a narrow loss overall to Essex which was frutrating as the team truly felt a win was more than possible.
 
However, the final match of the day against Oxfordshire gave them the opportunity to respond in a positive way. Lauren continued her imperious (and unblemished) form in the singles which set the tone for the tie overall it seemed. Matthew saved his best performance of the day until last with a fantastic second and third set 'blitz' after dropping the first set in his singles. Indeed only one rubber lost out of nine played here meant an emphatic end to the day, with the players (and coach!) going home very tired, but extremely pleased.
 
The final standings put Bucks third out of the five in the group. With the team feeling that on another day they could have been placed even higher will only encourage them to work hard and improve for next year. They can be very proud of their display!
 
 
Tom Edis
(county captain, under 9)