Trip nets hectic action

The sight of brothers  Lochie and Ashley Kitchen shivering while hitting balls at Mairtown Tennis Courts illustrated the distance they have covered recently.
The two junior tennis stars returned to Whangarei from the cloudless Mediterranean summer they were enjoying in the south of France.
They  are both nationally-ranked juniors with a real future in the game and they have never been more enthusiastic about the sport after returning from playing three months of non-stop tournaments based in Pezenas, southwest of Montpellier.
"In a region the size of Northland, there are hundreds of tournaments  every week and so we'd enter a tournament and drive there in the morning and play and return home every night," Ashley said.
The brothers joined Northland No1  Jackson Bodle and his coach Pete Stenburg, who arranged the trip, with two more players roped in from the Bay of Plenty - Whakatane's Paul Haslam and Rotorua's Jordan Katipa - to help make the trip more economical.
"It was amazing to see how many more people play the game over there and that's why the competition is so good," Lochie said.
And they weren't the only foreigners on  the circuit,  with players from Argentina, other South American countries and North Americans, as well as the other Europeans.
"It was great to go to get the experience of going to Europe, seeing another part of the world and being able to play tennis over there allowed me to do what I loved,"Ashley said.
The experience of playing mostly on clay was another attraction for the boys, was well as learning the local language.
"I didn't know how to speak any French at first but most of them speak a bit of English.  They helped us learn some of the language and by the end of the trip we were beginning to converse with people, which was really good," Lochie said.
Lochie won two tournaments during his time in France, with one victory in the small town of Alairac, particularly memorable.
"The mayor and all the local bigwigs turned up for the final and the prizegiving, it was very different from an event in New Zealand where nobody turns up to watch."
Ash won one tournament himself, while each of the other players also tasted success, with Bodle the biggest winner.
"Jackson won one tournament that earned him big bucks - about US$2000, but we mainly won a few bottles of wine and that sort of thing," Lochie said.
Now they're back and slowly acclimatising, Lochie is already eyeing up the beginning of the tournament season here.
He aims to make the quarter-finals of the under-16 nationals by the end of the season, while his older brother has  taken other challenges to heart.
Ashley is currently preparing  applications for  a tennis scholarship from an American university and he knows a good win in an internationally recognised tournament will help his cause as much as good test scores. "I'm just hoping to play well at the national juniors [U18] in December.
"That would set me up for the ITF international tournaments coming up here in January,"he said.
"If  I could pick up a few points there or even make the main draw, I'd be happy," he addeddn.
Now if they can just hurry up the onset of summer, the boys will be ready ... game set and match.