Grand Final, Wooden Spoon Final, Inaugural Night Tennis Gift & Break Up Party

The season started in October 2013 and concluded last Tuesday on Grand Final night. Champagne finals tennis was played whilst the non-players watched, sat around the smoking brazier, ate from the BBQ and goodies table and chatted on a cool damp Adelaide Hills autumn night.

Premiers

The two top teams this season were Bushranges and Racqueteers and they played off in the Grand Final. It all came down the last set of the night with the winner of that set to win the premiership! With Pam overseas in NZ there was no sledging to distract the Bushranges but nevertheless the Racqueteers managed to win the final set in a nail biting tie break 13 points to 11, only to find that this meant the final had resulted in an exact draw with both teams on the same number of sets and games! Jacqui was heard to say “After all that!!!!” With no rules or precedents to cover a draw situation, in true night tennis fashion, we made up some rules and having noted that the Bushranges had been undefeated all year, the Bushranges were promptly  announced as the very worthy season winners. Bushranges – Aldgate Tennis Night Premiers 2013/14. Congratulations and well done. Photos of Life Member Greg Sparrow presenting his own team with the winners trophies.

Wooden Spoon Final

Team Grundfos (they were pumped – sorry) had the honor of playing the The Wolfies for the coveted wooden spoon. Grundfos stacked their team by enlisting presidential Paul Bartley unexpectedly at the last minute but it was the Wolfies who clearly played the better tennis and won the match on the night…. and thus LOST the wooden spoon. The standard of tennis was so high this year and also being that we are so politically correct at Night Tennis, the wooden spoon trophies this year were not made from wood, but from recycled sustainably grown bamboo. One winner of a traditional trophy was overheard admiring the wooden spoons saying “They are lovely, I wish we could have won one of those!” Ah… there is always next year. In the absence of Grundfos Team Captain, Tony, Tracy came forward to accept the wooden spoons on behalf of her Team.

Inaugural Night Tennis “Gift”

Who is our fastest and speediest night tennis player??? There was only one way to find out and with the lure of chocolate bar on offer as a prize we had four runners sign up initially to run. On the night however, overcome with athleticism and the numerous offers from non-runners for free massages, many more svelte athletes stepped up to the starting line and the white board was filled with runners’ names, times (on the left of each name) and the sports bet odds for each runner (to the right of each name).

Each runner was timed as they ran from Court 4 (touching fence and holding their tennis racquet) and weaved between the net posts, touched the fence on Court 1 before sprinting flat out to the finish line on Court 2 opposite the patio. Clearly the most important job was that of time keeper but where could we find someone with the necessary credentials and stopwatch skills? Well, how about a Justice of the Peace, a man who has actually held and run with the Olympic Torch on at least two occasions (this is true), someone who not only knows Tatiana Gregoriava but has held her “poles” (enviously I again tell you this is true), someone who understand tennis and athletics and someone who is also a venerable Life Member of our Aldgate Club? Would it ever be possible to find such a person? It was possible – Graham Davis! Graham stepped forward to do the time keeping, ably assisted by Sally. There were many notable runs, commendations go to the young crew who made the rest of us look old ie George, Lloyd, Josh and Abby. The most stylish runs were done by Lou (chased by her masseur) and Kate. Paul was powered by chocolate brownies and needed to be swabbed afterwards and Richard was heard to yell “I’m doing this for my son” as he dedicated his run. See his run: VIDEO HERE. The most pathetic effort was from Peter who didn’t put in enough effort and drew boos from the crowd as he strolled around the course however his motives were pure because he made Myles’ time look very good indeed. Despite all of this the winner of the inaugural Night Tennis Gift with a startlingly quick time of 14.77 seconds, was Tom (pictured below receiving his chocolate bar) with worthy runners up Jordan and Sean with blistering times in the 15 second range.

If you would like to see a slideshow of some of the photos from the night, click HERE and the video of Richard’s run again  VIDEO HERE.

Thank you to everyone for a great fun season.  See you all again next season. Bye for now.