This years event was hosted by Harrow School Bangkok, the positives of this are sleeping in your own bed and being able to rest easier with the negative being the overseas trip which creates so many off court memories.
Having had no students graduate last year both boys and girls teams were very similar with Justin and Anya being the only debutants.
As with all Division One SEASAC tournaments, 8 teams were taking part split into two pools of 4.
The girls who were runners up in 2024 were in good form having defeated the best of Bangkok in the warm up events and started strongly with wins against BSJ and SAIS 4-1 and 5-0 on the opening day.
Day 2 started in similar fashion as NIST were blown away 5–0 to confirm top spot in the group.
With the other group a lot tighter we had to wait to find out our semi final opponents as even though UWC Dover had won in similar fashion to ourselves, the other 3 teams had all won 1 and lost 2 and all won the same amount of matches (5), same amount of sets (11) so the placings were decided by games won which saw CDNIS HK squeeze through. The girls took this in their stride and duly dispatched them 5-0 to reach a third final in a row against UWC Dover.
Having won in 2023 but not really got close when losing in 2024, the girls were certainly up for it and gave their all. Although Pin held a match point in her singles and Raichah had a titanic battle in hers we couldn’t make any headway and although Asama and Mila won their doubles and Amy and Pip in doubles and Rinka in singles fought all the way we ended losing 1-4 to take the runners up spot again.
The boys had the graveyard shift on day 1 with a 3pm start and then a 7pm match so after a morning at school and a practice also at school headed over.
First up for the boys was host school Harrow who had 2 top level players heading their squad, with rules changing 3 years ago to enable students to play singles and doubles in different matches throughout the tournament, this meant although we had a set roster 1-8 for the event match by match rotation was possible. With this in mind, I had decided to gamble a bit and put top seed Al into the doubles to try and strengthen both pairs. True to form as hard as Pete and Justin tried the Harrow top 2 had too much in their locker so we were quickly 2-0 down. Al and Philip quickly won their doubles to stem the flow and then Anton had an excellent match at singles 3 which he managed to sneak in the deciding super tiebreak. Unfortunately, the best laid plans didn’t quite come off as even though team captain Munk and Stefan led 4-2 3-2 they couldn’t quite get over the line losing in their super tiebreak.
The boys bounced back defeating TTS 4-1 to end the day with a win and a loss.
Day 2 saw a similar story as we played CDNIS HK for see who make the semi finals, with a similar strategy in place for our first game we once again went to the well but this time with no singles wins and 2 doubles win we again succumbed 2-3 to finish 3rd in our group.
The play off matches saw comfortable 4-1 wins against SAIS and once again TTS for a respectable 5th place finish or plate winners as some might say .
A big thanks to our wonderful parents who kept my supply of coffee going and supported with enthusiasm and encouragement all three days.
Unlike last year we had 3 year 13 students playing who will graduate in May who have been in the program for many a year. In the boys this year Captain Munk and Stefan have given us many great memories and humorous moments and in the girls Pin who has been captain for 3 years and is an inspiration to all the girls with her commitment, friendship and love for all her team.
