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SPORT 15
Double Whammy in
Essex Championships
for Bancroft’s
For the first time in twenty five years, the Bancroft’s
name appears on both the Essex U18 and Essex U16 girls’
hockey trophies. Both titles were claimed within a week
of each other – a truly great start to the hockey season.
The U16s , led by Captain Harriet Wood, enjoyed a clean sweep of six
victories during which they scored a total of 17 goals, and conceded
just one! Games played were as follows: v Coopers’ Coborn 2-0,
v Forest 4-0, v Chigwell 5-1, v New Hall 3-0 and v Brentwood 3-0.
Notable performances came from Emilia Nygaard-Parsons, Grace
Kumar and Harriet Wood, all of whom were superb. The tournament
represented the first outing together for the girls who had little time
to practice since returning to school from the summer break. Their
delighted Coach, Jo Fryer Green, said, “I’ve never been to an Essex
Championship where a team has totally dominated as we did last
Wednesday. The passing of our team was outstanding and we played
with great pace and flair. The work ethic of this team is also excellent;
they work for each other and respect each other. This is a very
exciting team to work with.”
A week later and it was the turn
of the U18s (some of whom had
only graduated from being U16s
themselves). Led by Captain,
Claudia Joarder, and Vice,
Millie Woods they remained
unbeaten, with wins against
Forest, Cooper’s Coburn and
Brentwood. They needed to
draw against Chigwell in their
final game to clinch the title, which they did 1-1. Since then both
teams have played in the Eastern regional play-offs. Again they
emerged victorious and will now face the four top teams in their
respective Eastern Regional Finals later this term.
Two superb teamperformances andmassive congratulations to all involved.
Getting Back into the “Swing” of Things!
Miss Amanda Wainwright,
Head of Tennis
This summer saw the 122nd Lawn
Tennis Association County Cup event
take place all over Great Britain. It is
an inter-county team event consisting
exclusively of doubles in seven
divisions with six teams in each. I am
proud to say that I was in the winning
Essex team in 1993 and 1995 but,
having retired from the professional
tennis circuit in 1998, since then I
have only occasionally dusted offmy
rackets for competitive match play.
My desire to practise regularly waned
with each passing year as I grewmore
passionate about kicking footballs
into
nets as opposed to hitting tennis balls
over nets (old habits clearly die hard
though as a few of my strikes on the
football pitch do soar spectacularly
over the net!)
Followers of
County Week
, as it is
affectionately known, know it is about top
quality (Jamie Murray turned out for the
North of Scotland!), hard fought tennis with
the pride of playing for one’s county at stake.
Since 1995, Essex Ladies have spent most of
their time in Division 1 but recently found
themselves down in Division 3. Having fought
their way back up to Division 1, the Essex
captain gave me a call asking if I would join
the team to give them the “
benefit of my
experience
”. At first, I thought this meant in
a mentor role but fear gripped me when I
realised that it was to be in a playing capacity.
My mind automatically turned to “
the good
old days
” when I thought nothing of taking on
anyone on a tennis court as I was practising
every day and competing almost every week.
One can only get away with relying on
muscle memory, natural talent and dogged
determination for so long before the inevitable
truth hits you as hard as a Nadal forehand – you
have to get practising. I did not want to let my
county down, I did not want to let my partner
down and I really did not want to humiliate
myself in an arena in which I used to feel so
at home. So, motivated by all those things,
my rackets had more air time in a month
than they had had in 18 years! Even with the
intense training, I still felt like I was diving into a
terrifying tennis abyss with my prayers ringing
out to the goddess Nike for victory to come
my way. Our captain blessed me with a superb
partner for the week; she was 16 and so we
had the benefit of youthful energy and stonking
ground strokes combined with wily strategy and
deft old-school volleying!
On the eve of the tournament our captain
told us the main aimwas to avoid relegation,
so we needed to get two wins from the five
days. We beat Warwickshire and Herefordshire
so our aim had been achieved but we did
not stop there. We then beat Kent, last
year’s champions, and Norfolk to set up the
championship play-offmatch with Surrey. With
so much riding on this tie, it was far from an
amicable affair. One of our opponents did not
take too kindly to having her serve broken as it
gave us the first set and, as I turned to high-five
my partner, a racket came flying over the net
and hit me! Less than robust refereeing resulted
not in the disqualification of the Surrey pair
and the subsequent loss of all their remaining
matches but simply a code violation…I did
not go all “Serena” over the lack of justice but
instead made sure we won the second set as
well – letting one’s racket do the talking brings
so much more satisfaction! The tie stood at
4-4 and one of our pairs had match points to
clinch that 5th win but it was sadly not to be
and we had to be content with being 2nd in
Great Britain. I know this disappointment was
unfounded, if someone had offered us 2nd
place before the event began we would have
bitten their hand off! But to come so close to
being champions was heart-breaking. With
some time and space, I am delighted with
what we achieved especially when we were
favourites to be relegated.
As an “old dog”, I would not say that I
necessarily learned any new tricks but it
definitely made me remember just howmuch
I love chasing down balls and playing “fetch”!