Ballacottier School wins the first event of the Zurich Primary Schools Mini Tennis Island Championships 2010
The first stage of this years Zurich Primary Schools Mini Tennis Island Championships has just taken place.

8 schools and 50 year 3 children (8 and under) took part in the Eastern Regional qualifying event held at Albany Tennis Club. The event followed 6 weeks of free coaching delivered by Isle of Man LTA coaches, which is supported by Zurich. The programme is being offered Island wide to all schools and is followed by a local regional competition. After all 4 regional events have taken place the winners and runners up are invited to take part in the Island championships to be staged on the 30^th June also at the Albany Tennis Club.        
The event commenced at 1.30pm after a brief warm up on the courts. The school teams were divided into 2 round robin boxes of 4 teams in each box.

Each team consisted of 4 players (plus 2/3 reserves) and each player played against their opposite number from the opposing team.

Braddan, Murray’s Road, Cronk-y-berry and Vallajeelt all played against each other in box A
Onchan, Ballacottier, St. Mary’s and Fairfield all played against each other in box B.

 After just over an hour of fiercely fought matches 2 teams emerged as winners of their box matches.
Vallajeelt and Ballacottier would contest the final.
Once again there were some excellent matches that were closely contested and some new stars were emerging into the tennis world.

However, Ballacottier recorded their first win in the history of the event with an impressive 3 matches to 1 score line.

Each child received a certificate for taking part in the Zurich programme and new for this year was free membership to the Lawn Tennis Association. Each player will get their own web page and can track all their tennis matches and results. The membership allows each player to compete in LTA events and they get an LTA rating (similar to a golf handicap) which they can improve by competing in ratings events and keep up to date on the web site.