{"id":9487,"date":"2020-10-29T16:28:50","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T05:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/?p=9487"},"modified":"2020-10-29T16:28:50","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T05:28:50","slug":"alicia-dale-becomes-youngest-pardey-shield-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/news\/2020\/10\/29\/alicia-dale-becomes-youngest-pardey-shield-winner","title":{"rendered":"Alicia Dale becomes youngest Pardey Shield winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alicia Dale<\/strong> has become the youngest girls\u2019 Pardey Shield<\/strong> champion, defeating Charlotte Ingram in the final en route to claiming the title at 13 years and six months of age, with the event run during the Bell Bay Junior Championships at Tennis World Launceston.<\/p>\n

The prestigious state\u2019s school boys and girls trophy was first held in 1918 and boasts an impressive list of previous winners, including Australian and French Open singles finalist and five-time Grand Slam doubles champion Helen Gourlay, and the late Angie Cunningham, a three-time junior Grand Slam doubles finalist.<\/p>\n

Cunningham, whom the Hobart International trophy is named after, previously held the title of the youngest winner of the Shield after claiming victory in 1986. <\/p>\n

For Dale, a top 10 Tasmanian player, it was a victory she didn\u2019t expect despite heading into the event having won both the 2020 SRT Logistics Rosny Junior Championships and 2020 Hobart Junior Championships in recent months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt pretty surreal,\u201d the St. Mary’s student said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I could play some good tennis but I didn\u2019t think I could take it away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tasmanian No.3 Sam Edgar<\/strong> took out the 2020 boy\u2019s title in his final year of eligibility, defeating regular doubles partner Sam Whitehead in a close contest.<\/p>\n

The 18 year old\u2019s name is now engraved on the trophy alongside current top 350 player Harry Bourchier, former top 80 player and Tasmanian coaching identity Simon Youl, and former Australian and Tasmanian cricket George Bailey, who is a three-time winner of the Shield.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s obviously a lot of great players on there from Tasmanian tennis history,\u201d the Hobart College year 12 student said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot playing in it last year made me really want to win it this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a tournament in Hobart a few days prior and I played pretty well making the finals so I had some confidence from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After registering a quarterfinals appearance at the 2019 18\/u National Championships in Melbourne last December and finishing runner-up in the recent SRT Logistics Clarence Open and Cygnet Open respectively, Edgar has his sights set on a big summer campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully next year I\u2019m looking at attending a US College in August; that\u2019s the goal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m preparing for that and hoping to compete in tournaments wherever possible in the lead-up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state\u2019s school boys and girls trophy boasts an impressive list of previous winners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6260,"featured_media":9488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[235,236,73,104,234],"class_list":["post-9487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alicia-dale","tag-angie-cunningham","tag-news","tag-pardey-shield","tag-sam-edgar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6260"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}