The Southern Lakes tennis team won all four doubles to seal an 8-4 win over Otago in Dunedin yesterday and took home the Rennie Trophy for the 14th consecutive year.
Led by the impressive Riki McLachlan and Emilia Price, the Lakes got a flyer at the top of the order and, although the veterans Mark Milburn, Chris Bradley, Tamsin Smith and Karen Mitchell all lost their singles to Paddy Ou, Mitchell Sizemore, Zoe Berryman and Abby Edwards respectively, their youngsters Manawa Rakete-Shea (15), Price (15) and Ines Stephani (13) won theirs.
Stephani fought back from a set down to beat Rileigh Fields 6-1, 6-1 in the next two, while Price was even more impressive being too severe for Jessie Stevenson, who contributed to some stirring rallies but could not convert into games.
Rakete-Shea showed the benefit of hard training and beat the more experienced Carlos Reid 6-4, 7-5.
However when it came to the business end of the tie, apart from a strong fight by Hicks and Reid in the top men's double, it was an under-par finish when the other three rubbers were all lost by Otago in short straight sets results.
On Saturday, the Otago men were largely untroubled in taking all six rubbers against North Otago in straight sets. North Otago's Rebecca Dellaway and Belinda Hurst took three consolation points for their team by winning both singles and doubles.
Southern Lakes won all six in the men, but dropped three in the lower order women to also take the overall result 9-3 against North Otago.
The six teams in division two completed a round robin, over two weekends. Otago B and Southern Lakes B both lost once. South Canterbury A and Southland Gold each had two losses.
The Otago and Lakes met last, in a virtual final, and Otago won 7-5, needing a 10-8 third-set tiebreak in the final doubles to clinch the result.
