The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

What Bahamas Lawn Tennis Association president Derron Donaldson had anticipated to be a very good team heading to the Americas Zone One Fed Cup Tie for women has now been depleted because of injuries and school commitments to the top singles players.

When player/coach Larikah Russell takes the team to Lambare, Paraguay for the tie scheduled for February 5-8 at the Paraguayan Yacht and Golf Club, she will only have the services of her veteran doubles partner Nikkita Fountain and rookie junior sensation Iesha Shephard.

Grand Bahamian Simone Pratt, the top seeded player, became the latest player to withdraw from the team. According to Donaldson, Pratt suffered a recurring injury and wanted to take the necessary preventative course of action rather than further aggravate it.

“Simone is on an ITF COSAT Tour (in Ecuador) and she emailed me about three days ago and told me she apologised for not being able to represent her country,” Donaldson said. “She has an abdominal strain that she wants to check out after the tour before it worsens. It’s the same injury that cost her to pull out of the December Invitational.

“She said she would prefer not to go and play and not be 100 per cent for her country and even worsen it. I have not yet formulated a response to her as yet. I’m working on it.”

Initially, Donaldson said Cartwright, who also didn’t play in the December Invitational because of an injury, had already informed the BLTA that she would not have been available to travel because of a school commitment that same weekend. Thompson, on the other hand, has just started her freshman year in college and is unable to take the time off to travel.

“With us being in Zone One as opposed to us being in Zone II, we didn’t have the luxury of having the players available to travel in the summer,” Donaldson said. “With Zone One being at the start of the semester, it’s kind of rough for us. It’s not that they don’t want to represent their country, it’s just a real tight situation for us.

“Should they be sanctioned? I say no. Should they be penalised? I say no. It’s just a situation where they are just not available to travel at this time to represent the country, either because of injury or because they are not available due to their school commitments.”

Last year, the team of Pratt, Cartwright, Thompson and Russell as player/coach, pulled the Bahamas out of Zone II.

Next weekend, the Bahamas is slated to play out of Pool B along with Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. Pool A is comprised of Mexico, Paraguay and Venezuela.

The teams will play in a round robin format with the winner of Pool A matched in playoff against the winner of Pool B to determine which nation will advance to the World Group II playoffs in April 2014.

The nation in 2nd place in Pool A will play-off against the nation in 4th place in Pool B; the two nations finishing in 3rd place will playoff against one another.

The two losing nations will be relegated to Americas Zone Group II in 2015.

Donaldson said without the top three singles players in Pratt, Cartwright and Thompson, the Bahamas will be hard pressed because of the in-experience of Shephard playing at this level.

“We were looking at the possibility of pulling out, but at this stage, it would have cost us more to do that than to play, so we decided to still send the team,” Donaldson said. “We just hope that none of the girls gets injured because of the amount of tennis that they will have to play in singles and doubles.”

As for any expectations, Donaldson said it all went out the window with Pratt’s withdrawal.

“We are just looking forward to them going there and doing the best that they can,” he said. “We are in a tough situation, so it’s going to be very tough on the three ladies. We have the experience in Larikah and Nikkita in singles, but we don’t know what to expect from Iesha playing at this level for the first time and being so young.”

At age 14, Shephard will probably be the youngest player that the Bahamas has used at the Fed Cup level. She follows in the footsteps of Pratt, who previously would have been the youngest at the age of 16.