Bar U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 5

Thursday 23^rd May 2013

It was another washout today here in Bar but the good news was that we managed to get a session in on the hard court, a session in our makeshift gym and the players managed to get a lot of school work done!

Alex and I were up bright and early again to try and get a 7am practice in but unfortunately the rain was already falling heavily. By 9am it was still pouring down so we all had breakfast and then decided to go to the supermarket to get some food and water. Despite the supermarket being so close we all got completely soaked!

Without an end to the rain in sight we went into the meeting room in the hotel at 10.30am and had a good 2 hour school work session, most of which I spent trying to do one of Alex’s GCSE maths questions!!

After lunch there was a break in the rain so we went straight to the courts and, while I tried to sweep some of the water off the hard court, the team went through an extended warm up.

Even though it was pretty dark throughout the session and the clouds were always threatening to rain, we managed to get a really good 45 minutes training in which included a lot of half court drilling and some serving points.

Almost as soon as we finished a storm came over and torrential rain, thunder and lightning engulfed the whole area. Without anywhere else to go for shelter we ended up in a tent that the tournament had set up as a children’s play area. After converting it into a gym the players went through their own strength and conditioning work for the next 45 minutes and then stretched out.

Eventually the rain died down so we decided to head back to the hotel to watch the end of ‘Coach Carter’ and relax before dinner. Once we were done we went through some goal setting and psychology work until about 8.30pm.

Despite not being able to play a match or train properly we still managed to get some good work done today and in particular the players worked very well during the psychology work at the end of the day.

Fingers crossed for some better weather tomorrow as the referee has 11 rounds of matches scheduled!

Schedule for tomorrow:

(Q) Andrada Surdeanu (ROU) (1367) vs Holly Hutchinson (GBR) (827) – 5^th match after 8am (not before 11am)

(LL) Holly Horsfall (GBR) (1908) vs (6) Georgie Axon (GBR) (378) – 6^th match after 8am

(3) Georgina Axon (GBR) & Holly Hutchinson (GBR) vs Holly Horsfall (GBR) & Elyse Lavender (USA) – 9^th match after 8am