SSBU Round Up: 2009 Age Group

By Hugh Ainsley

The last Age Group competition of the season was held at Wishaw Sports Centre on Saturday 22 April. The entries were quite high and also perfect for the draws with all events having perfect pools of 4.

For boys singles there were 20 entries., including 3 boys from Cumbria with Jamie Kemp winning his pull putting seeded Rory Clelland (Glasgow) into 2^nd place. Jamie went on to play top seeded Reyansh Arora (Scotstoun) in the semi but unfortunately had a fall resulting in an injury. Jamie played on but Reyansh managed a 21-11, 21-17 victory. In the bottom half of the draw Adam Li (Stirling) ended up playing all the other seeds beating Rory 21-9, 21-9 in the quarter final and Lakshya Sharma (Glasgow) 21-14, 21-14 in the semi. Adam was on good form as he went on to win the event with a 21-15, 21-16 victory over Reyansh.

In the boys doubles there were 8 pairs. The 3 Cumbria boys all reached the semi-finals with Rory Galloni-Wilkinson pairing up with Shoto-Leon Sato (Fife).The bottom semi-final was a battle of the Rory’s with Rory and Shota-Leon taking on Rory Cleland and Rory Meldrum. The Scottish pair won this semi and went on to play Adam and Lakshya in the final Adam was n form this weekend and won his second event with a 21-11, 21-13 victory.

There were 8 girls in the girls singles and the 4 seeded players duly qualified for the A knock-out. Lucy Degg (Musselburgh) had a good victory over Riya Bhaskar (Fife) in the quarter final and then battled bravely for 36 minutes before losing to top seed Thenoo Annamalai (Glasgow) 23-12, 13-21, 21-15. Shona Brown (Glasgow) had also had a good victory in the semi-final over 2^nd seeded Valentina Peterson (Allander) but Thenoo was just too strong in the final winning the event 21-14, 21-11.

For the girls doubles there were 4 pairs so just one pool. Lucy Degg continued her good form by pairing with Mia Robinson ((Edinburgh) to take second place in the pool but the winners were top seeded Shona and Valentina.

The season is now nearly over with just the primary championships to play. These were planned for the 6^th of May but to avoid a clash with another important occasion on that day they have been moved to Saturday 3^rd June with entries now closing on 19^th May.