Bridie Worthy, Hannah Skein and Savannah Auvaa shine for Central West in tennis' Regional League

Bridie Worthy (under 13s) as well as under 11s duo Hannah Skein and Savannah Auvaa formed part of the 12-player Central West outfit that competed at Parkes.

While facing stiff opposition and also having to deal with windy conditions, the trio produced some quality tennis in their singles, doubles and mixed doubles matches.

Their efforts added to what was already a big moment for Central West tennis.

"State League was around for a long time, then it kind of died off, it fell away, we've just introduced it again at the end of last year. This was actually the first time the Central West has hosted a State League event for probably 30 years," Helen Magill, one of Central West's managers, explained.

"It's incredibly valuable to have events like this in our region within a couple of hours travel. What we normally find is our younger kids, the 10s and 12s, can compete with the metro kids, but after that the gap widens because we don't have that volume of quality, we are having four or five hours just to get a hit sometimes at a similar standard.

"It's just really important to give our kids opportunities regionally as they have the hard yakka to travel to metro areas - there's the expense with that and the time as well."

The format of the Regional League competition sees teams divided into Southern and Northern divisions. Each team consists of under 11, under 13 and under 15 players with two boys and two girls in each age group.

Central West, which is part of the Southern division, encompasses a large region that includes not only the likes of Bathurst, Orange, Parkes and Dubbo, but Hawkesbury-Nepean, Blue Mountains, Broken Hill and Young.

READ ALSO: Young gun Argent-Smith creates history in memorial triathlon

READ ALSO: Bushrangers want to recruit fresh faces to join their deadly gang

READ ALSO: Bathurst tennis talent Collins wins NSWCHS Open's Singles Championship

Magill said the Central West encompassing such a large geographical area presented its challenges, though the team did hold a camp at Blayney to prepare.

"It's a big area, if you think of that middle chunk of New South Wales, it's a fair strip," she said.

"Our under 11s were Orange, Dubbo, Bathurst and Eglinton girls, our 13s were more spread with Bathurst, Blue Mountains, Parkes, Nepean and our 15s were Parkes, Orange and Dubbo.

"So we did really well given hardly any of these kids play doubles or mixed doubles together. That's always interesting for us. So for us to place second outright, that was a really great result."

Joining Central West in the Southern division on the weekend were teams from South West (Wagga-Albury area), South East (coastal region) and Southern Aces (ACT-periphery metropolitan Sydney).

While not usually permitted in tennis, coaches and managers were able to guide players as the games unfolded.

Skein and Auvaa both took on the advice they were given and it showed with strong results.

"Savannah and Hannah were really good little team-mates, they did really well. They both won two out of their three singles matches and two of their three doubles and mixed double matches," Magill said.

"So they performed really well and they're great little listeners, which is really important when they're only 10 years old.

"As a manager and coach sitting courtside you can't give these kids too much information because they can't take it all in, you have to be really specific. So they were good listeners, they took things on board and tried to act out the things we asked them to do."

As for Worthy, she impressed Magill with her work ethic and attitude.

"Bridie played really well, she's a good little competitor and worked really hard," she said.

"She was in a challenging division, there were some good little girls in the 13s, but she gave her best efforts all weekend. What I noticed about Bridie was she was pretty level-headed and didn't show negative emotion, her body language was great."

The other player who impressed Magill over the two days of tough competition at Parkes was Orange's Kaydn McLachlan.

"He was I guess the captain of the team, he headed the 15s, and he did a really good job," she said.

"They were really challenged in the 15s, but Kaydn, he led the team and did really well."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: