Eaton Bray Lawn Tennis Club

Posted on November 18, 2007

Another mammoth month for EBLTC: Our third court is painted and in use, our club Final's day saw some amazing wins, a joint Quiz night with the Village hall committee raised over £700 for the club, and our membership has risen again to almost 150, the highest ever in our 19 year history. That's now one member for every 17 villagers, so yes we are slowly taking over the village and at this rate we aim for world domination by next summer (if we get one). We might need a bigger clubhouse though, and I hope Hines can ramp up to supply that many burgers for our barbecues.

The sun shone brightly on our club Final's day, the culmination of several months of knock-out rounds, and the aforementioned barbecue sizzled succulently as once more our 48 menu options were hungrily devoured by players and supporters alike. I'm not sure that Darren Kerins should have had 3 burgers and a hotdog before going on court to play his Men's singles final, but clearly the calories counted as he beat Kevin Todd to take his 10th singles title and incredibly his 20th title overall including 5 men's doubles and 5 mixed doubles over the years. Kevin took revenge later though, winning his 7th Men's Doubles title when he partnered Peter Hill to overcome Darren and Martin Clarke. Jenny Baines closed in on Darren's total by defeating Rebecca Garrard in the Ladies Singles to take her 11th title, and in so doing matched the previous club record for a lady held by Jenny Moore. Jenny's husband Wayne has 12 titles and is 2nd overall in the club. In the Ladies Doubles Jane Cross and Val Abercrombie got the better of Jane Wigley and Danielle Tansley to take their 'title totals' to 8 and 4 respectively, whilst in the final senior match, the Mixed Doubles, Jane Cross made it 9 titles and Peter Hill claimed his 2nd by taking victory over Janet Hale and Simon Mitchener.

We also enjoyed 2 fascinating Junior competitions; the Under 10s culminated in Isaac Gordon just overcoming Jacob Shooter to take the cup. In the Over 10s, William Peck narrowly beat Alison Lowe in a closely fought match; definitely 2 potential stars for the future. I wonder if one of them will eventually overtake Darren's total of 20 titles? Not if I get there before them, but then I still need my first and I haven't entered for about 5 years and I don't have a forehand and I'm 35 years older than them but where there's hope there's a way. Oh did I mention my weight?

The Quiz night held jointly with the Village Hall committee was another resounding success with 155 people organised into strangely named teams, competing against one another to answer peculiar questions such as 'what is sturnutation'? and 'name the land-locked countries of South America'? The answers got progressively harder as the evening progressed on an exponential scale with the amount of 'bring your own drink' consumed. By round 8 after a wholesome paté and salad dinner, most of my team had trouble even seeing the quizmaster let alone understanding the questions, and we even got 'what time is news at ten?' wrong, and nobody knew 'in the 1976 Irish sheepdog trials, how many dogs were found guilty'? Nonetheless, we came a credible 9th equal (out of 10 I think) so went home happy, not surprising based on the empties we left in the recycling bag. Oh and apparently the answers to the above were 'Sneezing', 'Bolivia', 'Paraguay', '10pm' and 'all of them', but not necessarily in that order.

Finally we'd like to thank the Village Fete committee for taking pity on us after our over-easy 'tennis ball through-the-hole' stall (and all my subsequent moaning) and donating £100 to the club. Thank you, it was much appreciated. We'll spend it on some decent prizes for next time, and a new box with a smaller hole. Or bigger balls, or possibly all three. Or maybe we'll all just go to the pub.

Source: Focus, November 2007