Saturday 14th January 2012
It was just a training day today as all of the main draw teams arrived in Bolton in preparation for their first round matches tomorrow.
Mia’s had five early mornings in a row this week so today I wanted to give her a bit of a lie in by starting our training at 9.15am. We then went through 45 minutes of warm ups and movement work before we had an individual session for an hour to work on the specifics that came up from her match yesterday. The session started a little slow but Mia’s focus increased as time went on with the added motivation of being surrounded by some of the best players in Europe. After the session Mia went through her planned strength and conditioning, core and band work before having lunch.
We then had 2 and a half hours off which gave Mia another chance to keep up to date with school work before warming up again for her second session of the day at 2.45pm.
For her second session we decided to play a set with Alex Herd (Mia’s doubles partner) as we’d managed to book the whole court for an hour. Unfortunately neither of the girls were playing that great and when we stopped with Mia leading 4-2 there had only be 3 rallies that had lasted longer than 3 shots each!! As Mia was disappointed with her level and not being able to achieve the session goals she decided she wanted to stay on court so we then had a frantic couple of minutes trying to find a spare half court. Despite it being the busiest time slot of the day (right before sign in closes) we managed to get a half court with Eden Richardson and during the next 45 minutes Mia found a fantastic level which was exactly what she needed before her main draw match tomorrow.
Mia stepping up on a 2nd serve return (no fancy editing, this is how my iphone took the picture!)
After the session Mia had a long stretch out and then we returned to the hotel to shower and change for dinner. As the whole of the area around the tennis centre was unbelievably busy we headed into Bolton for dinner at Pizza Express before getting an early night.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Nina Van Oost (BEL) (165) vs (q) Mia Smith (GBR) (281) – 2nd match after 10am
Doubles to be scheduled after the singles matches
