18U Boys County Cup Report

Captains: Scott Paxton & Allan Cooper

Team:

• Osca 
• Seth
• Nathan 
• Cyrus 
• Django 
• Henry 
• Daniel 
• Louis 

The weekend included matches for the boys against Nottinghamshire, Cumbria and Somerset. 

Day one saw us play Nottinghamshire. The team selected for the singles rubbers were Osca, Seth, Nathan, Cyrus, Henry and Django. On paper and rankings, Nottinghamshire were stronger than us. However with a bit of grit and determination we went into the doubles 4-2 up, which included a retirement from Osca, as he injured his hip, and Seth, who came second, to a 6-1, 1-6, 6-7 (5) close match.

We then rested Osca and replaced him with Louis. We worked hard on our doubles during our preparation training, and this paid off with us winning all 3 doubles, resulting in a 7-2 victory.

This set the scene for the weekend and boys were very happy. We left the tennis centre with our confidence high.

Day two saw us play Cumbria. I told the boys not to become complacent on the back of a day 1 solid win.

Unfortunately, we had an injury (Osca) and a sick number 3 (Nathan). Neither of the boys featured in any matches vs Cumbria. This meant that all of the boys played up either 1 or 2 places, meaning very challenging matches before we kicked off.

However, the boys did us proud, getting us to 3-3 going into the doubles. We were confident going into the doubles, but with a change of teammates, and a strategy that did not pull off, we came second, losing 4-5 as a result. The match of the day saw Seth and Daniel battle out a very close match, securing the win 7-6(2), 3-6, 10-7 MTB.  

We all went back to the hotel, ate, the boys ran themselves an ice bath and we were all asleep pretty early. 

We woke up on Sunday (day 3) knowing that if we beat Somerset and Nottinghamshire beat Cumbria 8-1 or better, we had a chance of promotion. When we explained this to the boys at breakfast, some of them already knew this.

The morale was high, very high. Bodies didn’t ache any more.

We then set foot on the court to warm up vs Somerset. They had two very good players, playing at number 1 and 5 all weekend.

Osca did not play the singles, so everyone played up again. Nathan, Cyrus and Louis had convincing wins. Henry got through, but had a serious opponent and put his body on the line, he was exhausted. He got through it mentally and got the win. Django also put on a very brave, honest performance, to a very good number 5, who should have been number 2 all weekend. We were very proud of him.

We were 4-2 up. We knew we were close and the match in the other fixture was 5-1 to Nottingham, so we knew we couldn't afford to lose all three doubles. All we needed was one.

We strategically placed Seth and Django at pair 3, knowing they would split their two best players at 1 and 2 as they needed all 3 doubles wins.

Seth and Django won with a very professional doubles display winning 6-1, 6-1.

Unfortunately, we lost both of the other doubles which featured Osca/Cyrus and Nathan/Henry.

Scott ran over to the other bubble to see the fixture still going on and Nottinghamshire only beat Cumbria 7-2.

We were promoted in a really hard division and weekend, but both Allan and I were so proud of the boys, accepting decisions for the team were difficult and fighting for each other.

Here's to 2026….