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Bermuda tennis coach Steve Bean hopes the Island Games will provide the island's top players with some 'healthy competition' and make a change from the recent trend of taking licks overseas.

Bean hopes his team can improve on their impressive medal haul at the games in Gibraltar in '05.

And he said it would be great for Bermuda's top players to come up against countries on a similar level to them.

Andy Bray will lead a relatively inexperienced mens' team with just one change from two years ago - Jacob Trott in for the injured James Collieson.

Bray, who won the Vitamin Water Open this week, has been selected alongside talented youngster David Thomas, currently at a tennis academy in Texas, Gavin Manders, who is playing college tennis in the States, Jenson Bascome, who lives and trains in Philadelphia and Trott, the losing finalist on Sunday.

Ashley Brooks, the talented teenager who has dominated women's tennis in Bermuda for the past year, is the mainstay of the women's team.

Brooks, who is currently working with a personal coach in the States, will be part of a young and talented women's team in her first Island Games.

Fellow teenagers Jackie Lambert and Caitlin Gordon, both of whom are at academies in the U.S., and Cayla Cross, the youngest of the group at 15, make up the team along with the more experienced Zarah DeSilva.

Coach Steve Bean said it was great for Bermuda to be able to compete at their own level.

"We are feeling pretty optimistic based on how well we did last time. To be honest I don't know which countries we will be up against yet so we are just concentrating on our own game.

"We've had junior teams, Fed Cup and Davis Cup teams go away recently and we've been playing a little bit above our level.

"The Island Games, we think, is around our level. We are right in contention - it should be healthy competition and players should be able to come away thinking 'hey, we are doing some things right.'

"It makes a change from playing teams like Cuba who really stick it to you."

Bean, who will coach the team along with Ricky Mallory, said he felt the women's team, in particular, was stronger than last time. He said the four players that were still on the island - Bray, Trott, Cross and DeSilva, were training three times a week.

"We've got a couple of tournaments as well and its good for them to get that kind of match practice."

The XL Foundation has sponsored the Bermuda teams involvement in the Island Games, paying for flights and accommodation for all of the athletes.[[In-content Ad]]

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