Considerable success was achieved by a group of Bournemouth Sports players at the National Junior Championships in Hatfield last weekend. Saturday was the Junior event and was something of a roller-coaster day for Tressa Armitage. Her doubles partner Emily Bates dropped out injured early in the day leaving Tressa with no chance of a medal in the event. In the singles she lost in the quarters to Vicky Smith. Even though carrying a slight ankle injury Tressa felt she had underperformed. Then she picked herself up to win the Mixed Doubles with Sam Walker, a partnership which hopefully can do equally well in the Senior Nationals! George Downing also played well reaching the last 16 only to lose to a superbly in-form Jared Patel closely in five. Patel actually led 2 -- 1 against the winner and number one seed Sam Walker before losing on a tight 5th end. It is more than interesting that after these two great games the semi and final were something of an anticllmax with Sam beating both Igor and Helshan 3 -- 0. What could have happened if George had only been in the other half of the draw!
On the Sunday it was the turn of the cadets. Chrissie Slot reached her seeded position in the quarters, playing well within herself and lost to the number one seed Tin Tin Ho. Hugo Pang excelled, coming to the notice of several selectors on his way to the semis and beating higher ranked players such as Marcus Giles and Miles Chan. Although he lost in three close games to Sam Maybe, it's interesting to note that he was the only player in the semis with several more years in the cadets: all the others are in their final year!