College Tennis Stars Serve up an Ace at Schools Championship

Young tennis stars from Ellesmere College reached the National Finals to represent the Midlands in the AEGON National Schools Championships. The team consisting of pupils from year 10 played against teams from the Northern, South-East, and South-West sections.

Having won the county title and regional qualifiers, the team of Sammy Leung, Ole Linne, Aaron Sham and Aleksandras Calovas came through the regional finals at Warwick University. This time it was Ellesmere College, an unseeded team, who upset top seeds Minster School in the opening round after a narrow 7-6 shootout win and then went on to defeat number 2 seeds Lancaster School in the Year 10 Boys Midlands Finals, earning them a place at the National Finals.

Matt Byford, Circuit Director for AEGON Team Tennis Schools, commented "The Year 8 and 10 Quarter Finals have been a real success and it's been great to see 64 schools' tennis teams gather to compete on a regional level after their efforts over the Summer and Autumn terms. Over 2,400 teams entered the 2012 competition and by this stage, the 16 teams that remain are of a very strong calibre with a number of the top junior players in the country on court".

In the final, held at the Bolton arena, Ellesmere College came up against the High School of Glasgow, University College School, London and Millfield School, Somerset where they narrowly missed out on top spot.

Stephen Welti, Senior Performance Coach at Ellesmere, said "this is a very exciting time for our tennis academy, the standard in the finals was very high and the boys rose to the challenge. Our girls' teams also performed very well this year making it to the Quarter-final stage of the regional finals, everybody has played brilliantly".

7th January 2013  Back to News