EASTBOURNE TENNIS TRIP

On Tuesday 27th June, the Deal Parochial Tennis Club had an outing to the Aegon International Tennis Tournament at Eastbourne in Sussex.

23 children, together with Ms Brown, Mr Earl, 6 parents and 8 Manwood’s student helpers, travelled to Eastbourne by train in anticipation of seeing professional tennis at close quarters at this prestigious Wimbledon warm-up event. However, we were greeted at the Devonshire Park venue by rain and covered courts.  Unfortunately, the rain continued throughout the day and so we saw no tennis.

However, this did not dampen our spirits and the children enjoyed milling around the grounds, with some of them even being interviewed by a Sussex Radio Station.

Autograph hunting also proved very popular with the children; they met many players including the Bryan Brothers, Nicolas Mahut, John Isner, and Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who very kindly had photos with some of us as well.

Just before leaving, we even persuaded John Inverdale to come down from the BBC studio / balcony for autographs and photos!

Although the day had not been as we had envisaged, everyone came home having thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Many, many thanks to all the parents and Manwood’s students for their invaluable help on this trip.