SSBU Intermediate Inter Area & 2009 Age Group: Round Ups
Intermediate Inter Area (November 13)
4 teams gathered at the Sir Craig Reedie Centre to contest the Intermediate Inter Area event. There were many close matches and the match scores in the early rounds did not show clearly how closely contested some of the games had been.
The teams from Lothian and West of Scotland ended up playing for third place with the Lothian team winning this match by 7 games to 3. This meant the final was a repeat of the senior event a few weeks earlier. Going in to the deciding match both teams had won 19 rubbers and lost just 1. Glasgow took an early lead by winning both mixed doubles .
The two boys singles were next on court and both went to 3 games. Lewis Smith took 40 minutes to beat Lingyun Xiao 16-21, 21-16, 22-20 and Ryan Macdonald took just one minute less to defeat Blair Tait giving Glasgow a 4-0 lead. Edinburgh fought back winning both girls singles.
The girls doubles were shared and so the last 2 matches on court were the boys doubles. Ben Ross & Abhi Vinjam had another 3 set victory over Ciaran Ross & Alfie Sweeney so it was calculators out to see what would happen if Edinburgh tied the match. Blair & Lingyun were having a long battle with Lucas & Lewis with the Edinburgh pair coming out on top with a 23-21, 21-17 victory in 33 minutes.
On checking the total games on this occasion the Edinburgh team was victorious winning 50 games and losing 15 while Glasgow won just 49 games and lost 17. A great day of badminton and we wait to see if the junior Inter Area in December will prove to be as close as the 2 older events.
2009 Age Group (November 19)
Wishaw was once again the venue for the 2009 Age Group. This gave the best entry of the season so far with 20 boys and 13 girls in the singles and 9 boys doubles pairs and 6 girls doubles pairs. As usual the singles was played first with the four seeded boys reaching the semis and the top 2 seeds making the final. The final took no less than 37 minutes with number one seed Alfie Martin from East Kilbride taking a 15-21, 21-13, 24-22 victory over Arnav Saraswat from Aberdeen. Alfie and Arnav were back in action in the doubles and again were the 2 top seeds. Alfie was partnered by Max McCabe while Arnav partnered Luke Parkinson from Cumbria. This was Luke’s first return badminton since injuring an ankle on his last visit to Scotland. He opted to play only doubles because of the injury but he was in good form and on this occasion the number 2 seeds came out as victors again in 3 sets 21-15, 16-21, 22-20.
In the girls singles the four seeds again reached the semis although young Arisha Manir who had done so well in the previous event gave Shona Brown a hard fight in the quarters with Shona coming through 21-13 in the 3rd end. The final however was between Ingrid Wang (Edinburgh) and Shreya Vergheese (Renfrew) with Ingrid winning in 2 sets. Ingrid paired up with Lucy Degg (Edinburgh) for the doubes and in the pool games gained a 21-16 victory over the number one seeds Shona Brown & Shreya Vergheese. This meant that Shona & Shreya had to play the number 2 seeds (Thenoo Annamalai & Riya Bhaskar) in the semi. They won this match and ended up playing Igrid & Lucy again in the final. This time Shona & Shreya managed to reverse the pool result with a 21-13, 21-15 victory.
SSBU now have a rest for a few weeks before the junior inter area and 2010 age group events just before Christmas.