Starting from the qualifying stage, we had some straightforward wins but also some tough ones which included one against a school in Cardiff. We played in horrible conditions outside and taken to a shoot-out in both Senior Girls and the Mixed Doubles on the same day.

We started our journey to the Finals on Thursday 9th of March with Kate and Nicky J with a team consisting of  myself, Jodie Thomas, Anna Rogers, Pippa Chatikivanij. When we got to Bolton we headed straight to bed to get some beauty sleep for the big day. After breakfast we walked to the arena to get warmed and pumped! To do that we were blasting out tunes to get us going while the other courts were a bit dead. The first school we played against was Beauchamp College, we won overall 4-2. Jodie played an unbelievable match against another first seed and took the win. During our break, we found a female staff member to try to set up with Nicky J but he played hard to get. Kate and the girls (especially Pippa) tried to force Nicky J to sit and have lunch with her but unfortunately she was on the phone for a long time then left but we did not give up, we had another plan.

The second match we had to play after lunch was against Peter Symonds College where it was 3 matches all so we had to play a shoot-out. Pippa and I were the shoot-out doubles players and we both found it intense but all we could do was try our best and play point by point. As we are both Thai, we always talk in Thai on court and shout out where we were serving and no one would have a clue. The final score of the super tiebreak was 10-5. We taught Anna a word that means keep fighting (pronounced “Susu”), this ended up being all she could say for two days.

After our first day of competing, we went to Ask Italian for dinner and were lucky enough to have Scott Clayton (an Old Millfieldian and is now a professional tennis player), and his coach Jim Edgar join us.

On the second and final day of senior girls tennis we played against Beneden School in the morning which also went to shoot-out and ended in the same score-line of 10-5. At this point, Nicky J had finally found a way to have small talk with his girl but the tennis girls couldn't keep it together every time she walked past or when she came up to him to ask about the tennis…unfortunately nothing outside of tennis.

As we were top of our group, we were in the finals of the Girls Senior Student. Our competitor were Ellesmere College and we were terrified. There was a girl who was taller than Jodie who I had to play singles against. Thankfully, I managed to play well against her and got the win to make it 3-3 so that we had to do shoot out. Pippa and I played together again and we knew we could not mess it up. We were both tight all the way through but even more so after going from 9-5 to 9-8 but thankfully Pippa put away a volley to seal the title 10-8. Our supporters cheered on and we were all so relieved following the intense feeling and pressure.

I would like to thank the coaches on behalf of the team. Thank you Nicky J and Kate for motivating and supporting us all the way through. We would also like to thank Joe who was our coach for the team but has now left Millfield, he was always there supporting us through the qualifying stage until now and we could not have done it without him.

By Jasmine Olds