ACT\u2019s Narelle Raftery and Ros Balodis will captain Australian teams at the ITF Seniors World Team Championships from 12-18 August in Ulm, Germany.<\/p>\n
Raftery will lead the Australian team in the Maureen Connolly Cup as they compete against 16 other nations from across the globe. Raftery was part of the Australian team which won the title in 2017 and will be joined by Brenda Foster (NSW), Wanda Howes (Vic) and Leanne Swaysland (NSW).<\/p>\n
It will be the first time Raftery has led the Australian team. Despite returning three of the four players from 2017 champion team, Raftery says they are going in with mixed confidence with last year\u2019s number 1, Balodis moving up an age group.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year I was Ros\u2019 good number 2. We made a very good team at one and two. This time I\u2019ll have to set up and emulate her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raftery is coming into the event after claiming the singles titles at the Tennis Seniors Queensland Championships held on the Gold Coast last month. As well as the team\u2019s event, Raftery is looking forward to competing in the ITF Seniors World Individual Championships.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be the first year in a couple of years I\u2019ve stayed on to play the individuals as well. It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve felt good enough physically to go fairly deep into this time.<\/p>\n
\u201c I haven\u2019t had much opportunity over the last few years, so my goal would be to get as close to it as I possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow Canberran, Balodis will captain the Australian the Alice Marble Cup team of Lyn Mortimer (Qld), Judith Buzza (Vic), and Suzie Ellis (NSW). It will be the thirteenth time Balodis has captained an Australian team, with the Canberra legend looking forward to the moving up in the 60\u2019s age group.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to be in the 60\u2019s because I\u2019ll be the youngest in the group. I\u2019ve played in teams with two of the three players in my team this year before, so we know each other and get along well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite holding six world team titles, seven singles titles and 12 doubles titles, Balodis isn\u2019t getting too far ahead of herself and just looking forward to returning to Germany.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal is always to get through the two weeks without injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the second time I\u2019ve been to Germany for the World Seniors, last time they were very welcoming and we had a great time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ACT\u2019s Narelle Raftery and Ros Balodis will captain Australian teams at the ITF Seniors World Team Championships from 12-18 August in Ulm, Germany. Raftery will lead the Australian team in the Maureen Connolly Cup as they compete against 16 other nations from across the globe. Raftery was part of the Australian team which won the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":13935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}