By PETER LUC
TWEED players have dominated the seventh round of the Medibank Junior Tennis Development Series hosted by the Tweed District late last month.
With the biggest tennis centre, Tweed Heads Tennis Club, unavailable due to the state netball carnival, it was a great opportunity for some of our other tennis centres to showcase their clubs to the north-east NSW region – and boy did they do that.
Murwillumbah, Kingscliff, Banora and Terranora tennis clubs all created a wonderful carnival atmosphere. A big thank you goes out to the coaches, committees and volunteers for making the day so successful. Proof of this was an email from upper north-east NSW tennis co-ordinators who rated it one of the best MJDS events they had been to.
Under sunny but cool conditions, 96 players from around the upper north-east region converged on the Tweed to compete in the penultimate round. The Tweed District was very well represented with 54 players competing.
The 12 boys event, held at Murwillumbah, was a wonderful result for the Tweed District with all of the finals positions filled by Tweed District players. Jai Rowe (Murwillumbah) won the 12 boys title making it his second win in the series.
The 14 boys event, held at Terranora, was another successful age group with Tweed District players filling the podium positions. Early on, in the seeded pool round-robin matches, runner-up Brodie Clifford-Mullen had beaten Louis Clark, then with both boys making to the play-off final (for the third time this year and sitting at one-all), Louis turned the tables to win in an epic tiebreak set, to go up 2-1 on head to head and collect his fourth win of the series.
Among some great results in pool and finals matches, which includes two winners and five runners-up, a big congrats goes out to the following players who competed in the finals:
10 Boys: 3rd Mac Merthens, 4th Sam Kercher, quarters John Halmai.
10 Girls: quarters Alice McDougall and Emyleigh Shepherd.
12 Boys: Winner Jai Rowe, runner-up Flyn Schieb, 3rd Harrison Smith, 4th Jamie Krause; quarters James Griffin, Brandon Stockwell, Jacob Pedlow, Ethan Horner; round 16 Abhay Reissenberger.
12 Girls: 4th Montana Taylor, quarters Ena Mitchell and Emma Sinclair.
14 Boys: Winner Louis Clark, runner-up Brodie Clifford-Mullen, 3rd Brody Luc; quarters Gillon Preston and Ethan Bruggy; round 16 Will Styman.
14 Girls: Runner-up Saduni Wijeweera.
16 Boys: Runner-up Will Bagnall; quarters Lachlan Henderson, Alex Riddel, Mathew Nicholson; round 16 Reuben Mitchell.
16 Girls: Runner-up Tailey Beaver.
The final round of the MJDS series will be held on Sunday 15 July at Lismore. It is sure to be an exciting final round with players jostling for positions within the top eight and some players just outside the top eight trying to have that big last round effort to sneak in.
