One of our first Super 8 trophies for 2024 is safe and secure in the HBHS trophy cabinet.

The Senior Premier HBHS Tennis Team consisting of Flynn McGregor, Thando Thebe, Ben Stephens, Joe Huang, and Jeremy Coombe, won the 2024 Super 8 Tennis tournament. The tournament was held in Tauranga during Week 4 of Term 1. The event spanned over three days, with five teams competing in a round robin format. Each fixture consisted of four singles and two doubles matches.

Monday was the first day of the competition whereby we came up against Napier Boys’ High School as well as Palmerston North Boys’ High School. These ties were one-sided affairs with HBHS winning 6-0 in both.

Our third and only tie for Tuesday was against third seed New Plymouth Boys’ High School. This New Plymouth had some tough and competitive players. Despite there being many tough, close-fought matches within the tie, we were able to defeat New Plymouth Boys’ High School 5-1. This guaranteed us a spot in the final against the host and previous Super 8 winners, Tauranga Boys’ College, on Wednesday.

Tauranga Boys’ College is a well-rounded and very experienced team with great match ups at every singles position. We knew that every match, set, and game mattered when it came to a fixture like this. After all the singles were finished, we were up 3-1 in the tie, meaning we only had to win one more match in the two doubles fixtures for us to win. Our second pairing of Ben Stephens and Thando Thebe was able to secure the match to win us the tie and the overall tournament with us ending up winning 4-2 overall against our Tauranga rivals. This Super 8 win had a profound impact on our team as we had not won the tournament in four years.

A massive thanks goes out to the organisers, coaches, and supporters for making this event possible as it was a great success.