Ladies Summer County Week 2010

This summer the Ladies Kent Team played in group 3 at the East Dorset Tennis Club in Poole. The full team for 2010 was Emily Brimson (Captain), Catherine Darby, Jacqueline Darby, Chantal Coombs, Holly Richards, Mari Takino, Sarah Cantlay, , Rebecca Finch, Charlotte Park and Jessica Weeks.

After last year’s relegation, the team were motivated to play their best tennis and get the Kent ladies promoted back into group 2. The first opponents on Monday were Cambridgeshire; where as hoped we had a good day of tennis winning the day 7-2. Holly and Chantal playing as 1st pair had a great result winning all three matches. Kent’s 2nd’s Emily and Rebecca won two matches and our 3rd pair Sarah and Jacqueline also won two out of three. This was exactly the start we wanted!

Tuesday saw Kent play Hampshire and IOW, a tough team who we knew we would need to beat to stand any chance of promotion. The Kent girls went on to play some great matches winning the day 6-3. Holly and Chantal had another successful day winning all three matches, with Emily and Jacqueline winning two matches and Jess and Rebecca winning their last round.

On Wednesday we knew we had a tough day against Sussex who were the favourites to win the group. After some close matches we lost the day 8-1, with Jacqueline and Emily the only pair to win a match. It was a disappointing result as only gaining one rubber meant we were already behind other teams who had won the same number of days but had gained more rubbers throughout the week.

Thursday we were up against Berkshire, a crunch day that we needed to win to make sure we had any chance of promotion. Due to some overnight rain the first round was played on artificial grass, but unfortunately all three matches were lost putting us 3-0 down. Not the best of starts! After lunch we were able to play the following two rounds back on the grass, but were only able to win two rubbers, finishing the day having lost 7-2. Another disappointing result against a team that we felt we could have done better against.

Going into the last day with two wins and two losses, our chance of promotion had diminished. Instead we were in a position where if we lost on Friday there was the potential for us to be relegated due to other teams having a greater number of rubbers. Our final opponents were South Wales who needed a convincing win against us to avoid relegation, whereas we knew we had to win 2 or more rubbers to secure our place in group 3. The Kent girls pulled out all the stops with both the 1st pair Holly and Chantal and second pair Jacqueline and Sarah, winning all three matches. Kent won the day 6-3! This meant that we were tied on 3 wins with Berkshire, but with 8 less rubbers we finished in fourth position remaining in group 3 for 2011.

Overall Kent had a successful week, with some good wins and great tennis played. Being my last county event as captain I am pleased that we were able to stay in the group with the opportunity to have another go at promotion next year. I would like to thank the team for all their hard work throughout the week and to Catherine Darby for all her work as team manager. I’ve really enjoyed the three years I’ve spent as captain and I’m sure that the team will continue to be successful in both the winter event this year and future events from 2011.