Trinidad & Tobago U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 1

Thursday 21^st March 2013

After 20+ hours of travelling yesterday we finally arrived at the hotel in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago at just before 11pm last night. The team for the next three weeks of Grade 4 U18 ITFs is Mia Smith and Alex Hagon with Georgie Axon joining us for the 3^rd week in Guadeloupe.

At 8am this morning I was wide awake and even though we’d planned on having breakfast at 9.30am, both Mia and Alex were up early and wanted to eat! As you’d expect in a Hilton Hotel the breakfast was excellent and gave us a good opportunity to refuel after not eating that much on either of the flights yesterday. After breakfast we spend a while getting used to where everything was at the hotel and managed to find the gym despite getting lost! At most ITFs you don’t have access to a gym but we’re going to make sure we make full use of the one here (much to the player’s delight!!).

At 11am we took a taxi the short 10 minute journey to the courts and after walking to the local supermarket to stock up on water we eventually started warming up on court around 12.30pm. The facilities at the tennis centre are quite basic but well maintained and the courts are very good. After a good 30 minute warm up the plan was to spend an hour training to get used to the courts and the hot conditions but after about 20 minutes Alex wasn’t feeling well and ended up being sick on court which meant I had to step in!! Mia and I carried on with the rest of the session but I think the travel yesterday combined with the intense heat and humidity made us all feel a little rough.

At around 2pm we walked the short distance to the end of the road to Pizza Hut to get some lunch (only pasta allowed though!) and we were very surprised to hear that in the restaurant they have to give an estimated time for food and drinks – 3 minutes for drinks (they took 2 minutes!) and 12 minutes for food (which was spot on!). We were then back at the club by 3.30pm and not long after Mia and Alex started their warm ups for our 2^nd session of the day.

Alex managed to get through the whole session and Mia was feeling better too but the heat was still getting to both of them which resulted in a much lower level than normal. We thought that would be the case today and had discussed it earlier so neither of them were too worried especially as we’ve still got 3 more days until they both compete in the main draw.

After the session we went back to the hotel and straight into the gym to cool down and stretch out before having some time to ourselves before dinner.

We had dinner tonight at the hotel and then afterwards we had our first preparation / psychology session which we will try to do each evening so that the players have a chance to reflect on the day’s activities and discuss their thoughts. Tonight was performance / outcome goal setting for the trip and also a game plan for playing yourself which turned out to be a lot harder than the players thought!!

Katie Swan joins us tomorrow having recently moved to America and Georgie Axon will be arriving tomorrow evening so, combined with Robbie and Charlie Ridout who arrived today, we should have a good British contingent out here!