GOLD medal winning teenage tennis player Rebekah O’Loughlin is balancing school work with on court success.

The 17-year-old splits her time between studying at Crickhowell High School and training for and competing in various national and international tennis competitions.

Rebekah, from Llangyndir, even missed the first week at sixth form as she was representing Wales at the Commonwealth Youth Games in the South Pacific island of Samoa in September.

She and tennis partner Joely Lomas took the doubles gold medal at the small-scaled version of the Commonwealth Games that incorporate all 71 Commonwealth countries. The games are a celebration of high performance sport and can be a springboard to future Commonwealth Games success.

Rebekah spends two days in the week training at Bath and three days studying for a BTEC extended diploma in sports and excellence at Crickhowell High School as well as training as part of the tennis academy at Cardiff Met University.

Proud mum Melinda said Rebekah had been dividing her time between school and tennis since she was seven-years-old and a pupil at Llangynidr Primary School.

"Rebekah would love to be a tennis professional but obviously we will have to wait and see how it goes," said Melinda who said Rebekah may try and gain a tennis scholarship to a university in America or attend a full time tennis academy after finishing school.

Despite her punishing tennis schedule Rebekah passed all her GCSEs at Crickhowell High but intended leaving home and heading to Cardiff in September as the next step in her tennis career.

Rebekah was due to live with a ’tennis family’ in Cardiff to be nearer training facilities until the sixth form college she would have attended said it couldn’t support her training schedule.

"Rebekah made that decision as she wanted to do it as she could have trained before and after school without having to travel for two hours to use an indoor court as she does at present," said Melinda.

"But the college said it couldn’t support her with the amount of school she would have missed to play tournaments. We were only notified in July and I immediately rang Jackie Parker the head at Crickhowell High who said ’we will support Rebekah’. The school has been fantastic.

"She had intended studying A levels but while Rebekah was in Samoa the school suggested the BTEC would be better as she could catch up on the lessons she had missed on the computer."

Self employed Melinda said supporting Rebekah is a big commitment for dad, Mark, a retired police officer, and also brother Jacob, 13 and big sister Lauren, 20.

"We have had to sacrifice a lot as a family. This year we could only go away for nine days as we knew Rebekah was going to Samoa and would have to keep training while we were away."