Canberra ACT, Australia, 2 September 2015 | Todd Larkham

Congratulations to National Academy scholarship holder Kaitlin Staines who recently reached the semi-finals of the Oceania Closed ITF event held in Fiji. Kaitlin defeated No.7 seed Ella Husrefovic and No.3 seed Baijing Lin en route to the semi’s before going down to No.1 seed and eventual winner Jamie Fourlis.  Katilin is now ranked number 353 in the world in the junior rankings and will go to China for 2 events in September in a bid to improve her ranking and gain entry into the junior grand slams in 2016.

Former National Academy ACT scholarship holder Nick Kyrgios continues to show he can beat the worlds best with a win over Australian Open and French Open champion Stan Wawrinka at the Montreal 1000 Masters. Nick has now defeated 4 of the worlds top 10 in the past 14 months including Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Milos Raonic and Wawrinka.

For most of the other elite juniors in Canberra, August has meant a solid training block and an opportunity to improve all aspects of their game before the upcoming run of events to be held in NSW and the ACT over the next 8 weeks.  Training consists of 5-6 days on court with a mix of private lessons, squad training and off court fitness work.  The kids now have an outstanding training facility at Lyneham which includes clay courts and indoor and outdoor hard courts.

The new facility has allowed Tennis ACT to host more tournaments, with two Junior Tour events, and ITF junior event and two AMT events scheduled within the next 2 months. Many will also travel to Parkes and then to the NSW State Championships, a platinum junior event, in the upcoming school holidays.

A successful Bruce Cup fundraiser was also held in August. The main event was the “101” challenge with several teams entered including the “Chicks with Sticks” who took out the best dressed award.  A huge thank you to all for attending and particularly to Michael Ferraris who was the chief coordinator and to the other parents who generously gave their time to help ensure the event ran smoothly.