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On Thursday 12th May I travelled up to Nottingham tennis centre with the Kent county cup tennis team (six players and 2 coaches) to compete in the County Cup national finals after having successfully qualified earlier this year. I was lucky enough to take 2 days of school to compete in the event.

On the first day there was a training session at the Bromley tennis centre where both the under 14 boys and girls trained for an hour and a half. After lunch at the centre, we packed all our bags in the minivan and travelled 3 hours up to Nottingham tennis centre where we had another training session.

The next day we woke up at 6:30am. Our first match was against Oxfordshire, we had a great start winning all four singles to go up 4-0 at the end of the day. We had also played our singles matches against Cambridgeshire so we were already 3-1 up against them going into the next day. We returned to the hotel, had dinner at a nearby restaurant and got an early night.

On the third day we again had an early start, we travelled to the centre, got on the practice courts and played our doubles matches against Cambridgeshire, losing one and winning one. This gave us the win over Cambridgeshire 4-2. Lancashire was the next team to face. After some very tight matches the score line was 3-3.  A shootout to ten points would settle who would go to the final and who would fight in the 3^rd and 4^th place play offs. Unfortunately we were not able to claw our way through this one as Lancashire pulled out their big guns which included the 3^rd best under 14’s player in Britain. We returned to the hotel slightly disappointed but still in good spirits, it was a massive achievement we had made it that far. On the final day we fought against Hertfordshire, unfortunately we lost 5-1 after some very tough matches.

The tournament was over, we had achieved 4^th place overall  which we were very proud of considering every county in Britain competed in the event.  To be picked for the team was a huge personal achievement as there were only 6 available spaces for 350 competitors in the under 14’s category  in Kent. I had a brilliant time , learning so much from the experience and hope to compete again in the future.

Omar Prince