2010 National Junior series

Juniors from all over Australia come to compete to gain rankings for future tournaments and catch the eye of selectors for National teams.

Day 1

The Squad arrived safely on Thursday and settled into our accommodation. On Friday everyone enjoyed a slow start to the day, enjoying a megga breakfast of pancakes with fruit, maple syrup and scrambled eggs. On Friday afternoon the squad had training sessions at the 2 centre being used for the NJS to acclimatise and become accustomed to the different court conditions.

For the first round the squad divided into two groups with players playing at different centre. Our 15 boys and 17 girls all had ‘a tough day at thae office’ all having 2 matches today. At the Karadinga centre Robert Palmer started off for the ACT with a comfortable win. Followed by Jacob Watt and Zac Evans. Zac Evans lost a hard fought 5 set match and both Jacob Watt and Brenton Dally worked hard against stronger opponents, both losing in 3 but never giving in. In their second round matches all three players continued to give it their with Robert going down to the number 3 seed, Brenton being very unlucky not to take his match to 5, Jacob continued the trend set by Zac losing a titanic struggle in 5 and Zac Evans had a comfortable win in his second round match.

Alex Lock had an impressive start to his first major event losing in 4 to Jesse Keegan of NSW. Dylan Prentice was unfortunate with his draw playing the #2 seed first up. Leanna Davey reversed the trend with a 3 -0 win over her opponent.

At Ingle Farm, Laura McCredie had a fantastic start to the tournament winning her first match easily then backing that up with a 3-1 win over Luka Stroop fro WA who was the number 4 seed. Zac Morris, Jeremy Salter & Daniel Jones had tough first round matches all going down to their opponents and Josh Southwell-Nobbs made hard work of his 3-2 win being down a total of 5 match points before finally taking the match out.

The Squad ended the day with a BBQ and a game of minimum contact gridiron at a park close to our accommodation.

Tomorrow it will be another hard day with our 17 & 19 Boys who will all have 2 matches.

Day 2

Day 2 was a very long day with the Ingle Arm courts running an hour behind by the end of the day. The 17 & 19 boys all had 2 matches today. Playing in his first major event in his round 3 match Daniel Jones pushed his opponent all the way before going down 3- 1 in a very tight encounter. After what he described as a disappointing start to the tournament Jeremy was very happy to record a comfortable win in 3.

The news of the event is Leanna Davey beating the #2 seed, Jessica McLean from WA in 3 to set up a semi final against Naomi Dobson from NT. The match times for our players tomorrow allows us all to be at Ingle Farm to support Leanna during her match.

Each day Ryan and Helen have been awarding player of the day awards for each venue. Ryan’s award today went to Leanna for her fantastic effort and Helen’s award went to Zac Evans for the way he followed the coach’s advice and had a comfortable win in 3.

After a very long day today tomorrow we are anticipating an early finish and if all goes well we will find the local go carting venue and release a bit of tension.