The Isle of Man under-eights boys’ tennis team finished in an excellent third place in the recent LTA County Cup tournament, held at the Wrexham Tennis Centre.

Competing against some of the top under-eight tennis players in the country, the Isle of Man team was drawn in the same group as Cumbria, Lancashire ‘A’, North Wales, and Lancashire ‘B’, with a mixture of singles and doubles matches to be played throughout.

The Isle of Man team started well with a strong 7-3 win against Cumbria, with Ivan Yordanov, Jasper Hill and Thomlyn Varley all with singles and doubles wins. Tommie Manuja, making his first UK tournament debut, fought hard in the singles, losing narrowly 8-10 and 6-10 respectively. Martin Petrov played well to win his doubles match, playing alongside Thomlyn.

Next up were the Group favourite’s, Lancashire ‘A’, with the boys managing to draw 5-5 on games, but agonisingly losing the match on points. Impressive singles wins came from Ivan and Jasper, and again in their doubles match, with Thomlyn, Martin and Tommie just missing out.

Moving onwards with confidence, the Isle of Man saw off North Wales convincingly, with excellent wins in the singles for Ivan, Jasper, Thomlyn and Tommie, allowing for the doubles matches to be skipped to allow the tournament to finish on time.

Finishing off an excellent day of tennis for the boys, the boys were unfortunately outplayed by a very strong Lancashire ‘B’ team, with Ivan the sole Manx victor in the singles.

All of the boys did the island proud. None more so than Ivan in particular - competing as the top seed for the Isle of Man, he led the team incredibly well, losing only one game throughout the whole tournament.

After a long day of tennis, Isle of Man finished an impressive third in their County Cup group, from the five teams involved. Team coach Sean Drewry was delighted with the performances and the result: ‘I couldn’t be happier with their attitude and performances. It’s never easy for the Manx teams with the extra travel involved, they always give 100%.

‘In terms of Isle of Man tennis, this is probably the best result that a junior Manx team has produced in several years. It’s a special group of players that competes well against the largest of counties in the UK, which we haven’t been able to do for some time.’

The boys would like to thank Isle of Man LTA for its continued support.