Binh Duong U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 6

Wednesday 5th October 2011

The rain came down again today for the 6th day in a row but it didn’t dampen our training or Mia’s development.

It’s getting to be our routine that we’re up at 6.15am, having eggs and bread for breakfast at 6.45am and then on the bus driving to the centre at 7.30am. Mia wasn’t due on for her match until 2.30pm but we’re not ones to have a lie in and take it easy! We were on the court warming up at 8.15am and had a great session with three different partners (I think Mia wore them all out!) for 2 hours. The great thing about these events is that even if you’re out of all of the events there are still loads of players around to train with and it’s great experience to hit with so many different types of players.

After the morning session we had lunch and then debriefed on both the singles and doubles matches from yesterday. I normally go through parts of the match as soon as the player comes off court but it’s much more beneficial to revisit the match the day after once everything has had a chance to digest. Mia responded really well to the talk and we set some goals going forward into next week’s singles matches. We then spent a couple of hours watching some of the other main draw players and learning from what they’re doing well before Mia’s pre-match preparation started for her doubles.

Anais had won her singles comfortably against a Swedish girl and both players were really up for getting stuck into the second seeds. They started very well playing a solid game to break Claudia Williams but that was really the highlight of the match as they lost the next 12 games in a row. To be fair it wasn’t as one sided as the score line suggests and Mia especially improved her doubles game from the match yesterday. Mia and Anais played well in parts but they were too inconsistent and struggled to win the important points after getting to 30-30. It was another great learning experience and I can see Mia is starting to become comfortable in uncomfortable situations which is exactly what we wanted from the trip.

After the match it was still raining so we went into the badminton courts and, in-between getting mauled by hundreds of mosquitos, Mia completed her core programme and then had a thorough stretch out to end the day. Another good day in the bank, we might not have picked up any points this week but Mia’s getting close and it’s not going to be long before she gets on the board.

We were thinking about taking a day off tomorrow to visit the Chu Chi Tunnels and learning a bit about the Vietnam War but that would mean we’d have 2 days without hitting (as we’re travelling to the next event all day Friday) so we’ll try and move that to the end of the tournament next week. We’ve arranged practise sets tomorrow to keep Mia sharp which means another 6.15am start to the day – sorry Mia!!