Trinidad & Tobago U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 4

Sunday 24^th March 2013

Today was our final day of preparation before the main draw starts tomorrow and both Mia and Alex put in a quality day of training.

Most of the day followed the same pattern as yesterday; we had an early breakfast at 6.30am and then left the hotel with Georgie and Katie on the 7.15am shuttle bus. We then all warmed up together from 7.30 – 8am while Mia’s music pumped out of the new speakers that she had brought with her! As Katie had a match she just hit for the first 30 minutes of the session but Mia, Alex and Georgie stayed on for the whole hour and worked on the tactics that they would be using in the afternoon practice sets.

Shortly after we finished the session we returned to the hotel to have a second breakfast and relax for a while before we met again in the lobby at 11.30am to go through some psychology work. To maintain the player’s interest levels and concentration I limited the session to 25-30 minutes and then we hit the gym from 12-1pm to complete some conditioning work. Because there was only one day to go until the players were competing they just had a light session which was mainly movement based but they both worked hard throughout.

We returned to the club to find out that Katie had cruised through her last round qualifying match and then we all headed down to Pizza Hut to get some lunch.

After a short break it was time for the players to warm up for their second session of the day where Mia took on Georgie and Alex took on Daniel Superlano from Venezuela in a practice set. Both sets were of good quality; Mia took an early leaded but then had to fight back from 5-3 down before she eventually lost a close tie-break and Alex led 3-2 before his opponent upped his level and went on to take the set 6-4.

Both Mia and Alex were happy with their sets and felt as though they’d prepared well for the main draw tomorrow so it was just left for them to sign in before we got a taxi back to the hotel.

When we got back we headed straight to the gym to cool down and stretch out before we showered and changed ready for Katie’s birthday meal at TGI Fridays!

Despite a bit of a wait for all the steaks that were ordered we had a good meal which was topped off with a rather nice piece of Katie’s Smarties birthday cake!!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Alex Hagon (GBR) (1805) vs Patrick Nkrumah (TRI) (UNR) – 5^th match after 9am (not before 1pm)

Elizabeth Sutherland (USA) (641) vs Mia Smith (GBR) (755) – 5^th match after 9am (not before 1pm)