Summer county week 2019

Playing Captain Fran Brewester

Assisting Louise Hutchinson

Team Fran Brewester, Ella Taylor, Holly Hutchinson, Connie Nicolaou, Scarlett Hutchinson, Tiffany William, Megan Forster, Aleks Topalovic, Jessica Zeynel and Nell Arendt 

It was very exciting being back at Eastbourne after gaining promotion last year. It was always going to be a challenge staying in the top division especially as we had a couple of injury concerns.

We had a relatively young team however all but a couple of players had either been or were still playing for an American University, so I was hoping for a good level of doubles.

Our first match was against Essex, last years runners up.The Essex first pair were tough and managed to win all of their matches, but we were able take advantage of a weaker 2nd and 3rd pair and just take it by 5 matches to 4.

Second up was Warwickshire, we knew this was a must win match if we wanted to stay up and after the 1st round we were 2-1 up. Things improved in the 2nd round as we won all 3 matches so going into round 3 we hada 5-1 lead but knew that we needed as many runners as we could so finished the tie 7-2 up.

Going into day 3 we were in a great position with 2 out of 2 wins but had Herts up next, Emily Arbuthnott was in their top pair and was going for 15 wins and unfortunately none of our pairs could stop here. With a win from Ella and Holly and Tiffany and Fran, we went down 7-2.

We did predict that Herts would be tough, as would our next opponents Surrey ( 2018 winners). Ella and Holly who were by day 4 on fire managed to win 3 that day but after a couple of 3 setters going against us we went down 6-3.

We were still in a great position to stay and going into Friday knew we were probably safe but a win against Yorkshire would guarantee it.

Unfortunately there was a change in the weather so play on the last day moved to the Astro all weather courts at a local school.Playing in windy and wet conditions our ladies managed to get the tie to 4-2 up, again winning a couple of match tie breaks. Luckily a 4-2 victory was all we needed to gain a 3rd place finish.

So after 4 wonderful days of sun and a miserable last dayour ladies did brilliantly by staying in the top division in a very respectable 3rd position.

  The next few years should be promising for Middlesex with so many top juniors- Roll on Div 1 at Bath in the WCC

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