The Vittoriosa Lawn Tennis Club, in collaboration with the Malta Tennis Federation, is organising the NEXIA BT European U16 Tournament between 3 and 8 September 2012.

This international junior event is the first for VLTC and comes after having successfully organised several European U-14 Junior tournaments these last five years. The tournament is being sponsored by NEXIA BT, a local consultancy and auditing firm forming part of Nexia International, a worldwide network of independent auditors, business advisers and tax consultants.

To launch the European tournament, VLTC held a Green Tennis competition for children between the ages of 9 and 12 years, under the guidance of MMarco Cappello, head coach of the club.

At the end of the event, Karl Cini, international business partner of NEXIA BT presented medals while Mark Camilleri, MTF deputy president handed certificates of participation to the young players. During the presentations, VLTC president Dr Paul Micallef gave details of the forthcoming European U16 event.

The NEXIA BT tournament will consist in Boys Singles and Girls Singles events with a main draw of 48 players in each of the events. Boys and Girls doubles as well as qualification events are also being held.

This tournament has attracted significant interest from junior players across Europe and beyond. Young players from Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Liechenstein, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland and the Ukraine will be taking part.

Maltese junior players Raphael Sammut, Matthew Cassar Torregiani, Zack Ciappara, Mark Schranz, Alexia Cassar, Katrina Sammut and Rebecca McCarthy are also taking part.

The matches in the main draw will commence on Monday 3 September with the finals scheduled to be held on Saturday 8 September at the Atlas Insurance Court.

The tournament organisers thanked NEXIA BT for their sponsorship and Simonds Farsons Cisk for their support and invited the Maltese sporting public to attend this event and give their backing to the players.