Young tennis players compete against Tortola Club

Anguilla vs Tortola, 2004

To: The Anguillian
From: Brenda Carty, Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Last weekend there were 23 persons from Tortola, including parents and supporters, in Anguilla for a round robin junior tennis tournament. They were accompanied by coach Juan de Rosa from the Tortola Sports Club.

Mitchelle Lake, President of the Anguilla Tennis Academy (ATA), said that the round robin tournament that was held on the courts at Temenos proved to be a fun time as well as good experience in tennis for all the players. There were twelve children participating in the 11-13 age group with seven game sets on Saturday and Sunday. Some of the younger players learnt to be ball boys and enjoyed the experience. This under ten years group were also able to have some matches on Saturday.

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Juan de Rosa was full of praise for the ATA and all that it is doing. He said it was a great opportunity for the children from his club to have matches in Anguilla and he hopes there will be a return visit in June for children from Anguilla to go to Tortola. The group stayed at the Anguilla Great House, where de Rosa said they were very well looked after and provided with a bus to travel to Temenos. "It is a great experience to play with different children and Anguilla's players have a good standard," he commented.

According to Mitch Lake the standard of play has improved tremendously in the past few months, since the ATA started regular coaching sessions. He commended Juan for developing the tennis programme in Tortola and hopes that Anguilla will be able to help them by providing tennis equipment and coaching experts. He said that an exchange programme with several islands in the region will benefit everyone and when the tennis facility is completed exchanges like this will happen often. He thanked the management and staff of Temenos for the use of their courts and the Great House for accommodating the visitors from Tortola and also providing transportation for them.