Saturday 14th May 2022
It’s been a while since the last Blog at the Gran Canaria U12 TE way back in October 2021 but it was great to be back on the road for our first international event of 2022 … but not at 6am with a drive of over 300 miles ahead of me!
Rhys Roberts and his dad, Arwel, met us bright and early for our journey to the Dutch Bowl Ten-Pro event in Holland where we would meet up with Arundhati Ajit and her mum, Deepa.
Not something you want to see at 5:55am!
People say that bad luck comes in 3s so here’s our three for today:
1) Our 8:20am Eurotunnel gets delayed and we have to wait for the 8:54am train – not a great start to the journey!
2) After driving 300 miles from Dartford to Beek, Google Maps decides that it would take us down a horse riding trail for the last 800m of the journey – I still don’t know how the poor car survived (Isla & Rhys enjoyed it though!)
3) After a long day the German police decide to pull us over to check the car and our passports (I think we were about 25 metres over the German border!).
Despite all of that we arrived at the tennis centre at 4pm and all of the players had a very good 1.5 hour training session to get used to the courts and the surroundings.
At 6pm everyone gathered on the two back courts with their national flags for the opening ceremony:
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Rhys, Isla and Arundhati at the Opening Ceremony this evening
And Isla and Rhys were selected to take part in the action!
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We left the tennis centre around 7:15pm and picked up some dinner on the way home. I then sat down with the players at our house to go through their goals for the week before everyone went to bed for a well-deserved sleep after a very long day!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Davin Schoonderbeek (NED) vs Rhys Roberts (GBR) – not before 11am
Danha Castillo (NED) vs Arundhati Ajit (USA) – not before 12:30pm
Loes Vervecken (BEL) vs Isla Smith (GBR) – not before 12:30pm
