SSBU: 2012 Age Group Round Up
By Hugh Ainsley
On Saturday 11 November, it was the turn of the younger players born 2012 or later to play in the SSBU event at Wishaw.
There were 28 players in total. The boys singles had 21 entries. There were no great surprises in the pool matches but in the first round of the knock-out, Ameer Hamid (Glasgow & North Strathclyde) had a great game playing Aarav Sinha (North East) with Ameer winning the match 15-21, 22-20, 21-17.
Unfortunately for Ameer, his next opponent was Yingfan Wang (Lothian) who didn’t drop a set throughout the whole event. Yingfan beat Ameer 21-14, 21-4 in the quarter final, then beat his doubles partner Ziyang Xiao 21-9 21-5 in the semi-final before taking a 21-14, 21-9 victory over Divyam Goyal in the final.
Nine pairs took part in the boys doubles so there were two pools before progressing to the knock-out stages. Yingfan & Ziyang proved too strong for all opponents ending with a 21-15 21-10 victory over Yuanxi Cui & James Taylor (North East) in the final.
The girls singles had six entries and so there was a single pool giving the girls plenty of games. Josie Columbine (Highland) enjoyed her trip to the southern parts coming third to take the consolation medal with the top 2 seeds playing against each other in the last match to decide the winner. On this occasion Lothian player Emily Jobson was the winner beating her G&NS opponent Akshara Chavan 21-14 21-9.
Only two pairs entered the girls doubles. Josie paired up with G&NS player Reeya Kukreja, but Akshara and partner Ava Li (Midland) proved the stronger pair with a 21-10 21-6 victory.
On Sunday 12 November it was the Intermediate Inter Area where four teams entered. The West of Scotland team were two players short but still managed to achieve third place as the Lanarkshire team had some younger players playing their first event.
This left Lothian playing Glasgow & North Strathclyde to decide the winners. There were many good matches but on this occasion the Glasgow side came out on top winning by 7 games to 3. With the new larger areas playing in Inter Area events we are looking for more teams to enter so we hope to have more entries for the junior event in December.