10U Boys County Cup Report
County Cups for a small county are often tough affairs, especially if any key personnel are missing. We went in to this weekend’s event at Caunton (Notts) without our number one player, meaning everyone else had to play up a notch.
Being drawn against Yorks and Notts day one was therefore an incredibly daunting prospect. Both counties had good strength in depth from 1 to 4, headed by players in the country’s top 10. Great credit goes to Konstantin who had to face both these opponents back to back and did so with great fortitude, raising his game throughout the contests, rather than resigning to his fate as many lesser players would have done.
As we had no wins (or even sets for that matter) from the singles day 1, the opportunity was there for us to experiment in the doubles to seek out the best chemistry for our pairings for day 2.
Day 2 started with singles matches against Leics – where Jack at 4 managed to get to our first tiebreak of the weekend in his loss, Konstantin managed to get to 2 tiebreaks in his match…….but still unfortunately lost. Against Lincs, Seb had saved his best performance of the weekend to stretch his opponent to a tiebreak in the second set of his match at 2…….lots of promise emerging across the board, but still no wins heading into the doubles.
In the doubles we’d landed on Seb and Konstantin at first pair. They played an incredibly tight, high level contest against Leics with all 3 sets going to tiebreaks!! The boys played freely, with smiles on their faces and good energy throughout.
David and Jack were in pair 2. Against Lincs they took the second set 4-0, but we still couldn’t put that elusive win on the board. Jack and David showed excellent teamwork, encouraging each other and working together with increasing confidence.
The day finished, almost predictably with a final tiebreak loss for Seb and Konstantin against Lincs. (Sadly no wins, despite being competitive enough to have 8 tiebreaks on day 2!!).
It was quite amazing really just how well the boys were able to perform and compete in the doubles at the end of day 2 after such a chastening weekend.
They say you learn a lot more in defeat than victory, and I’d say hard fought defeats offer an even greater opportunity for learning and development? I think all the boys certainly had good exposure to what good county and national standards look like in this age group. There were also so many lessons learnt about the need for clear process focused goals (to avoid the emotional meltdowns), the need for abundant resilience (always being ready to suck it up and go again), and the establishment of professional routines (using change of ends time effectively, warming up and fueling properly etc………and this was just for the captains.
The boys will all come out of this a lot stronger for the experience I’m sure!
Justin Chacksfield
