Sunday 21st August 2011
This week we’re off to RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire for the U16 Tennis Europe event and the team consists of Mia Smith and Bromley Tennis Academy player Cameron Hawkins. Mia has some U14 TE points from Solihull earlier this summer and as those points count towards her U16 ranking they have helped her move into the main draw of the event this week. This will be Cameron’s first Tennis Europe event and only his second junior international event after Edinburgh ITF in July. He moved into main draw very late on Friday evening and so both of the players are looking to achieve TE points with a 1st round main draw victory tomorrow.
We met today at Bexley Tennis Club at 11.30am and trained for a couple of hours on the same surface (macadam) as the tournament is on. Both Mia and Cameron worked hard in hot conditions and by 1.45pm we were all done and ready for the hour and 20 minute drive to Halton.
After a brief detour (so we didn’t run out of petrol!!) we arrived at the club around 3.45pm, signed in and managed to get on court again for another 45 minutes of good training to get used to the match courts and get the journey out of our system.
Mia and Cameron getting a feel for the courts
After a thorough stretch out we headed over to Green Park which will be our home for the week. The accommodation is pretty basic but we’ve got a whole block of rooms to ourselves and for £20 a night including breakfast you can’t really go wrong!!
For dinner tonight we drove into Aylesbury and ate at Pizza Express before going straight back to the accommodation to prepare for tomorrow and have an early night.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Mia Smith (GBR) (1904) vs Celine Zoetelief Tromp (FRA) (UNR) – 2nd round after 9.30am
Cameron Hawkins (GBR) (UNR) vs Kaloyan Mihaylov (BUL) (1228) – 2nd round after 9.30am
Doubles:
To be confirmed after entry deadline
