SSBU Event – 10/01/2026

The second event of 2026 for SSBU was the 2008 and 2011 Age Group event at Wishaw on Saturday 10^th January. There was a healthy entry of 46 players, and it was always going to be difficult to finish the event on time.

The 2008 singles had 11 players and was played as 3 pools leading to an A and B knock-out. It soon became clear that this was not going to be a good day for the seedings as 2 of the 3 pools were topped by a non-seeded player. Two of the seeds did however make it to the A knockout but in the top semi-final ¾ seed Scott Theodas defeated top seed Chetan Karamilla 21-12,21-15. The b bottom half of the draw had no seeds and, in the semi, final Jacob Glass beat Marcus Selm 21-18 in the third end to reach the final. Scott however proved the strongest player on the day winning the final 21-18, 21-13.

The younger age group for boys went more according to plan except for ¾ seed Maoyan Li being relegated to the B knock out after finishing 4^th in his pool. He then went on to win the consolation event. 2^nd seed Kaliq Rafiddi 22-20,21-16 to Atharv Sharma in his semi final while top seed Divyam Goyal took 3 ends to beat Ansh Timalapur in the top semi-final. Divyam won the final 21-15,23-21.

On now to the ladies and there were just 5 in the singles which was played as a single pool. There were some close matches with younger player Elona Kennedy managing to beat top seed Grace Macintosh. Second seed Emma Joshua proved just to difficult for Elona, so with Emma playing Grace in the final match it was all to play for. Emma won this match 16-21,21-13,21-10 so finishing order 1^st Emma, 2^nd Elona, 3^rd Grace.

There were 11 girls in the 2011 singles played as 3 pools. The four seeded players duly reached the semi-final, but 2^nd seed Maggie Wang lost 21-19 in the 3^rd end to Sophia Gajri. Top seed Josie Columbine took the final 21-19,21-16.

With 2 events on the one day the intention had been to play the doubles events as best of 3 to 15 points to save a little time. There were 5 pairs in the men’s doubles and 6 in the boys’ doubles. Only Grace Macintosh and Chloe Hu entered the 2008 doubles, so this was combined with the 2011 event to give a pool of 5. However, while one the girls semi-finals was taking place court 3 sprung a leak and the girls had to be moved to the first vacant court. Management at Wishaw were as always very supportive and assured us that b because of this we could overrun past our booking to 5 p.m. if we needed to. Some quick calculations said that we could finish by 6 using 5 courts so the first doubles match was put on and players told to play best of 3 to 15 points. They were only a few minutes into their match when players on court 1 had to come off as another leak had appeared. Quick decision – all doubles matches will now be one game to 21 points. Play finally finished at 5.20 p.m.! In the junior boys event, there was a three way tie for first place with all three pairs winning 4 games and losing 1. The finishing order was 1^st Atharv Sharma & Ansh Timalapur, 2^nd Divyam Goyal & Kaliq Rafiddi, 3^rd Cyril Chim & Isaac Voang.

On to the men’s doubles where again things were very tight with a tie between Maoyan Li & Nathan Wong and Jacob Glass & Joseph Shell. Maoyan & Nathan ended up as winners.

The girls doubles also had many close matches with the pool being won by Josie Columbine & Annika Sinha. Grace and Chloe finished 2^nd but were awarded the winners of the 2008 event. Runners up for the 2011 event were Sophia Gajri & Giselle Lee.

On Sunday the action moved to Penicuik for the junior Inter Area. There were 5 teams – West, Lanark, Glasgow, Highland and Lothian. Unfortunately, the West team struggled to find girls with one player not turning up on the day. However, by using extra boys all matches were played, and the team enjoyed the event finishing in fifth place. The Highland team were also on girl short but despite that they were able to beat the Lanarkshire team to finish in 3^rd spot and they had a very tight match against Glasgow. However as usual the final was a clash between Glasgow and Lothian and on this occasion, Lothian proved strongest winning the match by 9 games to 2.

A busy time is coming up for SSBU with the secondary quaichs on 25^th February at Scotstoun and the secondary championships at Grange Academy on 7^th & 8^th March.