President's Day at Morpeth Cricket, Hockey & Tennis Club on Sunday 27th August began with a coaching session, the joungsters being put through their paces with John Robertson and other members of the coaching team helping out with the older element.

Next on the agenda was the official opening of the dugout, which Jonny Rezai and his team had been hard at work consctructing over the previous few weeks.  Despite the rain, president Janice (known as Jock) ripped the ribbon in front of a packed new dugout to declare the superb new facility open.

After a rain delay, during which many of the participants in the upcoming tournament took refuge in the clubhouse and sampled some of the fare from Steve Watkins' barbecue station, the President's Day tournament began.  22 players were sorted into pretty evenly matched pairs by organiser Alex Laude, and proceeded to fight it out in quasi-tie-breaks of 16 points, with each player getting a pair of service points at each end.

Unfortunately, after a sunny start, rain intervened once more with about half of the planned matches being played.  There was no prospect of further play, so Alex made some swift calculations to determine the top three pairings.

Third place was shared by the partnership of Helen Ball and Trevor Herron and the pairing of Brian Ortmann and Shay Whitfield.  In second place was Tracey Gaskill and Paul Meigh.  And edging it in first place was the pairing of Jake Fewell-Williams and Janet Robinson.  Jake and Janet benefited from playing Jake's dad, Graham, with his unfortunate partner Elizabeth Dodds, who shamefully allowed 13 points to escape to their opponents during their encounter.

The prize for Jake and Janet was a tin of balls each.  Plans are in place for a trophy to be procured, which will be presented to the pair on the End of Season Social Evening on Friday 13th October.