Ladies North Wales County Cup
The Ladies team went into the Winter County Cup event with a number of players injured or away in America this year, but despite this the team battled courageously and didn’t go down without a fight.
We lost each day 5-4 with matches being very close and all our senior players competed in the singles. It was also great to show the younger players that we still have the desire to compete and fight to win for our county and hopefully they will look up to us.
For this event we were without Morgan, Elin and Ethne who were all in America at Uni. Ellie and Aditi withdrew with an injury also but it was great to see Alice back in the team along with Ananya, Hannah and Lili.
We have a great bunch of juniors and it’s great they can learn and compete in our senior county cups. We are looking forward to Summer County Cup with a good mix of ages.
Kathryn Rymer
Mens Winter County Cup
North Wales entered their second consecutive year in Group 3 of the Winter County Cup optimistic in the knowledge they were fielding a full strength side. Huge recognition in particular to Tom Thelwall-Jones for returning from US college specifically for this event and also Mikar Fisher for flying in from his training base in Spain to be able to compete. Outstanding commitment shown by both.
Day one saw us against a Warwickshire team fielding Dan Evans and number 10 Lloyd Glasspool. This obviously made the task challenging and we eventually went down 6-3 despite some excellent wins for Nic Jones and Tom Thelwall-Jones together with Matt James and Mikar Fisher on the doubles court.
Day two was sure to provide a tough challenge against a Staffordshire side who had won 8-1 on day one against a weakened Dorset. Comprehensive wins from Tom and Nic gave us an early lead, however Staffordshire battled back and it took a titanic effort from Matt to level the match at 3-3 going into the doubles. Team Captain Simon Morris combined with Nic to put North Wales 4-3 up with Mikar and David Parry battling strongly before eventually going down in two tight sets meaning the match rested on the final rubber. Tom and Matt held their nerve to seal a tense 5-4 victory. The group was evenly poised after day 2 with all four teams having won 1 match each (Warwickshire's Evans and Glasspool) played only against North Wales allowing a full strength Dorset to seal a 5-4 win.
This set up an exciting final day, which got off to the best possible start with comprehensive wins for Mikar and Tom. Nic also celebrated an epic 9-7 final set tiebreak win to put us 3-1 up. Both the top 2 singles matches went to three sets with Simon losing out at 2 before Matt squeezed out a high pressure win at 1. The rubber count from the other group match had meant promotion was no longer a possibility and one rubber was needed to ensure relegation was avoided. All three doubles rubbers were extremely tense with Tom and Nic sealing a third set tie break win to ensure with 5 rubbers we could not be caught, culminating in a second placed finish in group 3.
Overall on reflection as captain, I was immensely proud of our team, the commitment shown by every team player was first class and in my opinion the strongest level of tennis we have fielded in the 19 years I have been playing the event.
Simon Morris