Junior News Update 24th August

After a busy summer of activity both in our club and outside with a lot of tennis played we are coming to the end.
July in the tennis club was a very busy month with our Parks summer camps running for 4 weeks with over 250 juniors taking part.  During July the club also hosted a camp for Spanish students which was very successful with our Spanish friends integrating with our juniors both in a competitive tennis setting and socially.  To follow up on the July camps the club gave all camp participants a chance to practice and play tennis for 3 weeks in August by hosting supervised tennis every day from 10am to 1pm.  This proved very successful with over 100 juniors playing tennis throughout the weeks.
Outside of the club our competitive juniors were busy competing with Ireland’s best in tournaments all over Ireland and abroad.  All roads lead to the Irish Junior Open which was held in Fitzwilliam over the last week and a half.  With Simon Carr out injured for a couple of weeks and Ammar Elamin away playing in Prague at a Tennis Europe U-14 event our hopes of success rested on juniors who competed well all summer.  Ciaran and Niamh Nolan, Jamie Battle, Emer Murphy and Anna Jones all went with hopes of doing well in their perspective age groups.  First up in qualifiers was Jamie Battle in Under 16 boys singles who came up against a top player in the first round and was unlucky to finish on the losing side.  Jamie teamed up with Anna Jones in the mixed doubles Under 16 main draw – after a tough first round match which they won in 3 sets the pair faced the number one seeded pair and lost in two close sets.  Emer Murphy in under 14 girls singles qualifiers won her first round match comfortably and lost her second match in 3 sets.  Emer teamed up with her regular doubles partner