The Clarendon High tennis team produced a fine performance to finish as runners-up in the second Sentraal Festival in Bloemfontein at the end of August.
The teams were made up of six girls and six boys and they competed in round-robin sections, where overall points determined the final positions.
The girls’ section was very competitive with many matches going down to the wire. Clarendon secured second place after a nail-biting win over Gqeberha rivals Pearson on day two.
The final placings were; 1 Voortrekker, 2 Clarendon High, 3 Pearson, 4 Sentraal, 5 Eunice, 6 Fichardt Park.
Clarendon raced out to win an early 8-1 lead by winning the first four singles matches on day one but Pearson hit back to take victories at positions five and six to make it 9-5 going into doubles.
The doubles counted as double points per set in the tournament and Pearson started off strongly at number one with a three-set victory to close the gap to 11-9.
They pulled level with another three-set win at number three to leave the score 13-13 as it came down to the second team to decide the outcome of the fixture.
Pearson started well by taking the first set before Clarendon fought back to win the match in three sets giving them closely fought 17-15 win.
Going into the final round on Saturday afternoon, there were four schools still in contention to finish with Voortrekker having established themselves at the top.
The Pearson girls took on the hosts in the final round and after yet another close match, it was Sentraal who came out on top.
The result saw Clarendon High finishing in the second spot.
After opening with a win over Fichardt Park (22-6), Clarendon went down to eventual winners Voortrekker 20-10.
However they then hit their stride and followed the close win over Pearson with 15-10 and 20-11 victories over Sentraal and Eunice respectively.
