Coylton mini tennis champions

Nowadays mini tennis red - played on a badminton-sized court with lightweight balls and short rackets - is aimed at children up to 8 years old. However, fairly uniquely in Ayrshire we have always made this version of tennis available to all primary age schoolchildren, as was its original intent when it was called "short tennis".

This is largely because our climate makes it difficult to sustain an outdoor full-court coaching program during winter. The lightweight orange and green balls blow around a lot in wind and rain (as do some of the younger children).

And because it's fun and the kids love it.

Each year we run our own Coylton mini tennis red indoor coaching program - for all primary school ages - culminating in boys and girls singles championships. This is a list of our winners as far back as our records go.

We didn't hold the competition in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid-19

Ayrshire mini tennis championships - all the Coylton winners

Writing the post about Iain winning the Ayrshire mini tennis championships left me thinking about the other Coylton players who had done this. A trawl through the archives threw up a couple of interesting statistics.

In the last 15 years a Coylton boy has won the open age tournament 5 times, meaning we win it every 3 years on average. Not a bad record.

Also of note, in all but one of the seven years 2006 through 2012, one of our boys made it to the final. In fact in 2006 the final was an all-Coylton affair. And in the year we missed out on the final, one of our girls won the girls open.

This is a good achievement for any club and to capture it I've listed all our winners and runners-up in each age-group.

The winners

Boys Open
2015 Iain Stevenson
2011 Euan Wilson
2008 Ross Duncan
2006 Allan McClure
2001 David Baird

Girls Open
2012 Hannah Spence
2010 Nicole Clarke

Boys U10
2006 Ross Duncan
2003 Charlie Macneal
1997 Tommy Veitch

Girls U10
2008 Rebecca Spence
2007 Nicole Clarke

Boys U9
2010 Adam Smith
1996 Tommy Veitch

Girls U9
2007 Nicole Clarke

Boys U8
2002 Aaron Dick

Girls U8
2006 Nicole Clarke
2005 Nicole Clarke

The runners-up

Boys Open
2017 Adam McIntyre
2012 Sammy Jess
2009 Brian Hewitson
2007 Allan McClure
2006 Aaron Dick
2005 Aaron Dick
2004 Charlie Macneal
2000 David Baird
1993 Neil Winstanley

Girls Open
2011 Hannah Spence
2009 Rebecca Spence
2008 Sarah Fergusson
2004 Hannah Garrett

Boys U10
2015 Gregor Morris
2006 Fraser Graham
1999 David Baird

Girls U10
2016 Rachael Lubek
2011 Hannah Spence
2010 Hannah Spence
2003 Caitlin Russell
1999 Emma Cuthbert

Boys U9
2014 Gregor Morris
2010 Sam Kerr

Girls U9
1998 Emma Cuthbert