Move aside Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray – Umhlali Prep has a tennis big four of their own!

The school’s first team of Ryan Thornhill, Blake Nicholson, Taine Lawson and Cameron Kock recently claimed national honours ahead of 679 schools countrywide.

They won the finals of the BNP Paribas RCS Rising Stars National Tennis Tournament, held at the Gauteng East Tennis Complex in Benoni from October 25-27.

It was the culmination of months of tennis, which started with schools competing regionally to represent their province in the finals.

Umhlali qualified as the boys representatives for KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), matched by Winston Park Primary on the girls side.

The format for the tournament was that each contest included a doubles and two singles matches, with two out of three wins needed to move on.

Blake and Taine played as a doubles pair throughout, while Ryan and Cameron played singles.

Umhlali beat Limpopo’s Eureka Primary 3-0 in their first match, before narrowly scraping past Grey Bloem (Free State) for a 2-1 victory.

That set up a semi-final against Clarendon Primary (Eastern Cape) and the Umhlali quartet again delivered a 2-1 win to qualify them for the final against Gauteng’s Hammanskraal Primary.

Umhlali continued their fine form in a fantastic finals atmosphere, beating Hammanskraal 3-0 to bring the trophy back to KZN for the first time in five years of the tournament.

The team thanked BNP Paribas RCS for hosting the event and their coaches, Tanya Lawson and DW Augustyn for their support.

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