Herts’ badminton aces net Shires trophy
Author: Archant Regional
Date: 18 May 2005
Category: Tournament Results
TEENAGE badminton aces from the Welwyn Hatfield district helped a county team
net a national title.
The Herts U17 squad won the Shires League competition played at the Leicestershire
Badminton Centre.
Queenswood
pupil Kate Lester and Stanborough girl Charlotte Willis were both
members of the triumphant Herts Schools' BA team managed by Tony
Clarke, from Bengeo.
The county U17 squad, based at the
Hertfordshire Sports Village in Hatfield, qualified for the finals by
winning the southern group, beating Berkshire, Essex, Hampshire, Kent,
Surrey and pool runners-up Sussex.
The qualifiers from the other
three regional rounds were Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Buckinghamshire,
Warwickshire and Leicestershire.
And the Herts team, including
seven junior internationals, emerged victorious overall after beating
great rivals Yorkshire in the final to avenge their defeat to them
earlier in the month at the Inter-Counties Tournament in Nottingham.
The
victorious team also included Dame Alice Owen's School duo Victor Liew
and Frankie Edelmann, Haberdashers' pair Kamran Haq and Nigel Tao,
Hertford schoolboy James Reynolds, Potters Bar teenager Katie Comras,
Matthew Westwood and Victoria Stokes.
The respective group
champions played the runners-up of another group in the first round,
the winners then battling for the top four spots.
Herts played
hosts Leicestershire and comfortably won 10-0 to join Yorkshire, Bucks
and Warwicks, who had surprisingly beaten third seeds Notts, in the top
four play-offs.
The Herts aces beat Bucks 8-2 in the
semi-finals, losing only the first boys' singles and doubles, to book a
date with Yorkshire, who struggled to beat Warwicks 6-4.
The
final started with the mixed doubles and Herts' Haq and Comras
surrendered what looked a winning 11-3 lead to lose to their Yorkshire
opponents 21-19. Liew and Lester levelled the score with a close-fought
21-16 win in the second mixed.
The teams shared the boys'
singles with a win for Tao, but Simon Balle pupil Reynolds was defeated
by U15 national champion Richard Morris.
Edelmann and Comras won the girls' singles to give Herts a 4-2 lead with just
the four doubles to play.
Tao
and Westwood won the second boys' doubles 21-12, while Haq and Liew
were locked in a titanic struggle, finally squeezing home 21-18 to give
Herts a winning 6-2 lead overall.
Herts lost one of the girls'
doubles, but Freman College pupil Stokes and WGC schoolgirl Willis beat
a strong Yorkshire pair 21-16 to remain undefeated throughout the day.
This
gave Herts a 7-3 victory and sweet revenge for their 6-4 defeat to
Yorkshire earlier in the month in the final of the Inter-Counties.
