SSBU Tournament Recap 13/12/25

The last SSBU event for 2025 was the 2013 Age Group Tournament held at Penicuik Leisure Centre on Saturday 13th December. There was a healthy entry of 42 players with 33 boys in the singles event. There were 8 pools to start the event and the main 8 seeds all successfully negotiated the pools to reach the A knock-out. However in pool H unseeded Ayaan Mogul was the surprise winner defeating both Nicholas Wong and Kevin Xu to win the pool. He then beat Vivaan Pritam 19-21,21-17,21-11 to set up a quarter final match against second seed Matthew Gajri. Matthew proved just too strong here winning 21-12, 21-14 but Ayaan put up a good fight and will surely do well in future events. In the top half of the draw top seed Joshua Gajri came up against Leo Zhong in the semi-final. This was a very tight match with Leo winning 21-19, 22-20 leaving him to play Matthew in the final. This was another close match with Matthew winning 24-22, 21-16.

A last minute call off from one of the girls reduced the girls singles to 8 players so event was redrawn as 2 pools of 4 instead of 3 pools of 3. The top 2 seeds made it safely through the pools but Lanarkshire player Tim Nam Lai was on form in the knock out where she defeated second seed Sunny Wu 21-17, 21-18 in the semi-final and then reversed the pool result by beating Ivy Yu 21-8, 21-1 in the final.

There were 12 pairs in the boys doubles and the event started as 3 pools of 4. Ayaan Mogul paired up with Leo Zhongand defeated second seeds Luke Jobson and Daniel Soflano to win their pool. In the knock-out Joshua and Matthew came up against Luke and Daniel in the semifinal. Unfortunately Penicuik Leisure Centre closes at 4 p.m. on Saturdays and with the pool games into finishing until 3 there was no time to play best of 3 games in the knockouts. Joshua and Matthew won the semi-final 21-8 and then defeated Ayaan and Leo 21-13 in the final.

There were only 4 pairs in the girls doubles so this event was played as a single pool. This was won by Tin Nam Lai and Ivy Yu with runners up Varshasri Ethilarasan and Magizhini Parthibhan.

The next SSBU event is again at Penicuik on 3rd January with the 2014 Age Group Event.