Third time lucky..

It was a case of third time lucky for the district junior championship. After cancelling the 14s, 16s and 18s twice before due to wind and rain, these events were eventually completed late August. The 10s boys, 12s mixed and 16s girls were all played in June.

Jed Simpson (Dumfries) proved too strong for both his opponents in the 10 and under event beating both Finlay Reynolds-Lewis (Dumfries) and Ewan McMillin (Beechgrove) in straight sets to claim the title. In the 12s and under mixed event Kyle Gilmour (Beechgrove) beat Michael Maggiori (Dumfries) 6-2 although the match was much tighter than the score suggests. In the consolation event Callum Reynolds-Lewis (Dumfries) edged past Ewan McMillin 6-1.

In the girls 16s and under Rhona Park (Lochmaben) was victorious against Ella Paul (Beechgrove) in a high quality final with a final score of 6-4, 6-4 to Rhona.

As summer passed by and we headed into late August, at last some dry calm weather was the order of the day to get the final three events finished. The 14s and under boys was played under the Nunholm floodlights. After several years away from the tennis courts Alex Shearman (Lochmaben) returned to tennis the years and capped an excellent return with a winning performance against Lewis Gilmour (Beechgrove) 6-2 to claim the title.

This left both the 16s and 18s boys titles which were completed on the final weekend of August. In the 16s final Stuart Balfour (Dumfries), defending champion took on Lewis Gilmour who was in his second district final. Unfortunately for Lewis the outcome was the same and although the score was one-sided at 6-1 the match was far from it with many games producing 10 shot plus rallies but in the end Stuarts patient game won through.

In the 18s the 1st and 2nd seed made the final and served up a very good match. Chad Lawson (Lochmaben) who has had a good season winning 5 local events, was up against defending champion Duncan Muir (Dumfries) who was playing in his 100th LTA rating event.  The first game of the final proved decisive as both player gave it all but Duncan took the advantage by breaking Chad’s serve to race to a 2-0 lead and from that he held on to take the 1st set  6-3. In the second Duncan’s experience was vital as he took the final set 6-2 to claim his last D&G junior title before stepping up into the senior game.