I've searched and I think we are missing a topic for this. It's really quite an important part of the British Tennis landscape and should be followed on this forum. Clearly it's never going to be as big as College Tennis in the states, but we do have quite a few aspiring professionals in the BUCS system.
Men's National Premier this year was won by Stirling Uni (I'm an alumni). Colin Fleming also attended.
They managed to beat Durham by what looks like one point.
The link below shows the player stats for the whole season, you can see some impressive names, including Jonny O'Mara who was only 2 points away from being undefeated all season.
you must be pretty good if you played for stirling university born2win! I had the "pleasure" of playing their 5th team a few years ago, playing for Aberdeen. I personally had a brilliant time playing in the lower levels of bucs tennis, not just the competitive side but we also regularly have socials meets with the other scottish university to give non team players the chance to play and meat people other universities.
i don't think english universities have as much emphasis on the social side as in scotland as i remember our first team went down to sheffield for a cup game once and didn't even get offered match teas after ( also remmeber the dundee guys saying the same when they went down to durham!)
it should also be noted that last year in the premier north there were 3 scottish sides, stirling 2's, strathclyde and edinburgh, maybe more people are choosing to stay in the uk for university tennis
No I didnt play for Stirling Uni, I had already given up tennis aged 15 when Jamie and Andy started beating me aged 10&9! I only took it up 10 years later aged 25...and now make it one of my many tennis participation missions to stop players giving up at or just after uni, via my corporate tennis competition. I am now gutted I gave up for ten years.
That sounds great about the rise of the other Scottish uni teams. I will need to check out the lower divisions on the lta website.
We've got a US college tennis thread. But don't seem to have a specific one for GB university tennis. Which seems to be growing and growing. We have a useful handful of players who are either at uni in Britain as part of a tennis programme or were recently. This site lists the UK's nine performance tennis unis (I think they get a grant from the LTA)
Scott Duncan ((ex?)Uni of Stirling) get onto the ATP world rankings again with a win today in Belarus. He's also been soaring up the doubles leaderboard these past few months, currently ATP 598
Ben Jones (current Uni of Bath, doing chemistry, I think) who also will now be ranked, having got his first ATP singles point today. He too has made big strides in doubles and just crept into the top 1000 (ATP 999) Last week.
Mark Whitehouse ((ex?) Imperial) - another point today in Korea and also into the mid 800s, and doing well
Jonathan Binding - ((ex?) Durham) - part of the LTA player-coach programme - another point today, in Portgual, and having chalked up new CHs in both singles and doubles this month
Isaac Stoute (ex-Sussex) - also chalked up new CHs in singles and doubles this month. And made the final at Sutton.
Cross fingers that Loughborough's George Houghton also manages a MD win this week - he was so close to his first one last week.
Olivia Nicholls, ((ex?) Loughborough uni), also part of the LTA's Player-Coach scheme, has also had a great summer, up to a CH of WTA 238 in doubles.
-- Edited by Coup Droit on Tuesday 21st of August 2018 07:34:36 PM
I did start one Coup, it's called BUCS tennis British University (and) College Sport. Like you say I think it's important we have one. Great to see a lot of players from our unis earn ranking points. It would be cool to have a British player challenge from GB unis vs American colleges each summer. Like a Ryder Cup! With bragging rights to the winners as to who has the best players. Obviously for strength in depth the American system would win, but the top guys with Johnny O'Mara, Ben Jones, Isaac Stoute etc would put up a decent fight.
Sorry, Born2Win - sometimes when you do searches on this forum, nothing comes up, or it misses some obvious stuff. (Although maybe because I didn't know it was called BUCS and that confused the search engine)
If a mod has time and wants to consolidate it, that'd be fine and a good idea.
What a great idea to have UK and US unis playing each other in a summer tournament There are probably enough UK players at uni in the US who are home for the summer to make enough 'US' college teams to get such an event up and running!
There is the Prentice cup which has been running since 1921 where a combined Harvard -Yale team spend 6 weeks every 4 years travelling around the UK playing doubles against various clubs and culminates in them playing a combined Oxford-Cambridge team at Wimbledon. The Ox-Camb team travel to the USA to do the same thing, so play Prentice cup every 2 years. More recently the Seabright cup was introduced for the women's teams.
Seemingly there is a match-up with US and GB uni/college tennis, at least a friendly one against Harvard/Yale. Apparently we won 4-3 in the men and lost 2-4 in the women.
That and all the other recent GB uni news is in the newsletter below:
In the same vein as the list of players going to US college on tennis programmes, just to note that the following two are off to Loughborough this month:
Mike Shaw (often in British Tour events, and quali ITF events) and
Joe Newman-Billington who made the MD of the 15k in Nottingham, despite it being his first ever ITF quali tournament
I followed the US College vs BUCS annual competition up with the LTA and Sarah Borwell (Tennis Smart) and the LTA said they weren't interested but Sarah was.
I followed the US College vs BUCS annual competition up with the LTA and Sarah Borwell (Tennis Smart) and the LTA said they weren't interested but Sarah was.
Not surprised the LTA are not interested, would require flexible thinking and someone to be pro active
I followed the US College vs BUCS annual competition up with the LTA and Sarah Borwell (Tennis Smart) and the LTA said they weren't interested but Sarah was.
Not surprised the LTA are not interested, would require flexible thinking and someone to be pro active
Those who run the LTA are extremely pro-activewhen it comes to their salaries.