Cheshire Junior Shield – September 17 2023 hosted by Knutsford tennis Club.

 A morning of round robin Fast 4 tennis, with both boys and girls groups competing against 5 other clubs was scheduled to find our ultimate Cheshire Junior club champions.

Although there had been a few drop outs from the original schedule (for instance at one stage the boys had 13 teams entered) we do appreciate that the opportunity to watch the Davis Cup in Manchester was a huge opportunity for our youngsters (although perhaps we should point out that our Referee, date and host club had been booked many months before the Davis Cup dates and venue were announced and forms part of our Cheshire competitions calendar).

Fortuously, where we might have been lacking in number of clubs we certainly weren’t lacking in quality, with many county players involved, including both our 2023 18U boys and girls Champions.

The boys results were relatively straight forward with 1 club unbeaten and therefore an outright winner (without dropping a single game!). Results of the boys Cheshire Junior Shield:-

1st Hoole

2nd Heswall

3rd Lymm  

4th Widnes   

The girls event was more tricky with 3 clubs beating each other and referee Tom needing all his fingers and toes to work out games differential. The top 4 girls clubs were finalised as:-

1st Widnes

2nd Lymm

3rd Bramhall Lane

4th Heswall

The tension was building to see which club would be crowned with the overall Cheshire Junior Shield trophy… and you can see the referee`s dilemma, with the respective positions of both Lymm and Widnes.

A 10 point match tie break was needed to split the two clubs, played between 1 boy and 1 girl from each club, which was narrowly edged by the siblings from Lymm.

Congratulations to ALL players and their parents. Full results are here. View more photographs here

Special thanks to referee Tom Brown, Knutsford LTC and coach Mark Airey for hosting the event.