Cambs Junior Fun Tournament 14 November 2015

CRC was full of U11, U13 and U15 junior badminton players on Saturday for the Cambridgeshire Fun Tournament, held by Cambridgeshire Badminton Association with the generous support of Cambridgeshire Schools Badminton Association.

Congratulations to everyone who played, as there were many close games which were all played in excellent spirits.

The winners were:

U11

Boys Singles: Adam Wang (RU Achira Waduge) / Girls Singles: Carys Leung (RU Phoebe Meikle)

U13

Boys singles: Wing Lun Lim (RU Manula Dharmawardana) / Girls singles: Ruby Spencer (RU Olivia Chan)

U15

Boys singles: Cameron Foo (RU Harry Zhao) / Girls singles: Sophia Abbott (RU Rachel Owen)

U11

Boys doubles: Adam Wang & Achira Waduge (RU Zai & Oliver Winfield)/ Girls doubles: Sophie Biers & Carys Leung (RU Jasmine & Phoebe)

U13

Boys doubles: Wing Lun Lim & Lewis Edmund (RU Zichen He & Manula Dharmawardana)/ Girls doubles: Sophie Biers & Carys Leung (RU Jasmine & Pheobe Meikle)

U15

Boys doubles: Cameron Foo & Harry Zhao (RU Wing Lun Lim & Alec Davis) / Girls doubles: Rachel Owen & Alice Bates (RU Claudia Bazyk & Olivia Chan)

All the results sheets are available in the Gallery section.

Over 50's home v Essex Match Report

Team - Martin Smith, Wilfred Janssen, John Pickering, John Harvey, Angela Sharman, Dianne Baker, Carol Salmon, Xin Cheng.

All games were played in good spirit, with the team giving it their best shot in what was always going to be a tough fixture with Essex, who had already beaten Herts 12-0.

We gave our all but the result was unfortunately a 12-0 defeat to strong Essex team. I think it is safe to say we all had some good games, but were beaten by the stronger team on the day.

Many thanks to the team.

Martin Smith.

Cambs Restricted Weekend 2015: Results

Thomas Li: 2015 Mens Singles Winner

After a very long and very hard weekend of competitive badminton, Cambridgeshire Badminton Association has again hosted an extremely successful County Restricted competition.

In all, seventy three players competed across five disciplines, with plate competitions in four.  After some immense on-court battles, the winners were

• Mens Singles: Thomas Li
• Mens Singles Plate: Stephen Pickering
• Ladies Singles: Jenny Crump
• Mens Doubles: Abu Kaher & Neil Place
• Mens Doubles Plate: James Wilson & Thasprakash Annamale
• Ladies Doubles: Jenny Crump & Katie Morton
• Ladies Doubles Plate: Lily Matthews & Stacey Knoop
• Mixed Doubles: Thomas Li & Natalie Taylor

Photographs of the winners are available in the Gallery.

Complete details of the results can be found on Tournament Software.

Many thanks to everyone who made it such an excellent competition.  Special thanks must go to Neil Place, who managed to compete in all three disciplines as well as performing the Tournament Secretary role and keeping everything running smoothly!

Harry Zhao Enjoys Cambridgeshire U19 Restricted Victories

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Harry Zhao: U19 Singles Winner

Whilst a sad lack of entries in the girls event meant the competition was not played, there were a healthy crop of boys contesting the Cambridgeshire U19 Restricted at Burwell Sports Centre this afternoon.

Split into two round-robin groups, Group B was won by Jordan Huynh with a 100% success rate, and the runner up Cameron Foo only lost to Jordan (21-15). Group A turned into an extremely close competition: while Harry Zhao came top by winning all his matches, it transpired that Jacob Oberholzer and Jake Alsop ended the competition on identical points scores.  This resulted in Jake going through on the head-to-head result (21-16).

In the semi-finals, Jordan slipped into top gear and beat Jake 21-8, while Harry beat his doubles partner Cameron 21-14.

In the final it was Harry who seemed to have the energy and consistency to take the match, seizing runs of points throughout the match and eventually winning 21-13.

Moving onto the doubles, after a round-robin group of five pairs, it was Harry and Cameron on top with a 100% win record who faced the scratch pairing of Jacob Oberholzer and Jake Alsop.

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Cameron Foo and Harry Zhao: U19 Doubles Winners

The final was a gripping, and startling contrasting game of two ends.  Jacob and Jake shocked Harry, Cameron and the onlooking crowd by storming out to a 11-3 lead at the changeover.  However, with careful serving and using their experience and consistency, Harry and Cameron fought back, putting together an impressive run of 14 points to reach 17-11, and eventually win 21-12.

Congratulations to Harry, Cameron, and all the other boys who played the competition.  There were some excellent games, and the competition was played out in good spirits all around.

For more pictures, including the scoresheets, please see the gallery pages.

Cambs O50s v Leicestershire

Team: Angela Sharman, Di Baker, Xin Cheng, Sandra Dennis, John Pickering, John Harvey, Martyn Clark, Martin Smith.

Mens - Martyn and Martin won the only mens game, but John and John had a very close 3 ender against a strong Leics 1st pair, loosing out 21-19 in the third end.

Ladies - Many thanks to Sandra Dennis for standing-in at the 11th hour, due to an injury to Helen Taylor. Angela and Sandra were 14-10 up when Angela had to retire with an injury to her knee/calf. Hence we had to concede their two ladies games. Di and Xin managed to win one of their games 22-20 and 21-18.

Mixed - Due to Angela's injury we conceded the 2nd mixed game. All of the remaining games unfortunately slipped away from us, with John H and Xin managing a 3 ender.

Final result a 10-2 loss, having had to concede 3 rubbers. Many games were closer than the scoreline suggests.

Report by Martin Smith.

Over 50's ICC Weekend Report

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The Cambs over 50s attended the BE ICC weekend tournament on 10/11th January at Lilleshall Hall, Telford.

We played 6 matches over the two days, but after some excellent badminton and some very close games came away with 3 x 4-0 and 2 x 3-1 losses and 1x 2-2 draw (for which we are claiming the moral victory by 7 points!! ) Although it sounds like a bit of a whooping 2 of the 4-0 losses had 2 sets which went to 3 ends and so could have gone either way.

The team seem to have acquired a new mascot "Swanney", in the form of a balloon modelled Swan!! He/she came out to play at the dinner on Saturday night and was the subject of much fun !!!!! More so for some of the team........He, with a little help had some of the opposing team threatening to join us having seen the attention he was attracting (I will leave this to your imagination).

I think I am safe in saying a very good time was had by all, with some very good badminton too.

Team: Angela Sharman, Dianne Baker, Helen Taylor, Xin Cheng, John Harvey, John Pickering, Martyn Clark, Martin Smith (c)

Report by Martin Smith

Masters County Challenge O45 2015 Report

Saturday

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Back row (left to right) Peter Colerman, Nick Pratt, Kevin Barron and John Foo

Front row (left to right) Sharon Chandler. Sandra Ashcroft, Lucy Matthews and Olga Bryant

It was with great trepidation, anticipation and excitement that the Over 45 team of Olga Bryant, Sharon Chandler, Lucy Matthews, Kevin Barron, Peter Coleman, John Foo, Nick Pratt and Captain Sandra Ashcroft (who had the onus task of trying to keep them all in line) headed off to Lilleshall for the annual Master games. They were in Group 1A containing Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Wiltshire and would play one match against each other county consisting of 1 Ladies, 1 Mens and 2 Mixed doubles.

Out first match was against Leicestershire and following a long journey of some 3 hours it was always going to be tough, a very nervous debutant Lucy Matthews played in the ladies with Sandra Ashcroft it didn’t take them long to work out their partnership and narrowly lost 21-15 21-17,  but this hopefully meant positive things for the weekend, next it was the turn of Peter Coleman and Kevin Barron who won 21-14 21-17,

Score  1 all going into the Mixed Cambridgeshire strength normally Olga Bryant paired up with her partner of old Nick Pratt at number 1 mixed and cruised at 21-7 21-13 followed by Sharon Chandler and John Foo who closed the match out in favour of Cambridgeshire 21-16 21-16.

Match score 3-1.

With a sit out of 3 hours this gave the team time to talk tactics and team selection HA HA!!  or grab 40 winks.  Team spirit was high going into the next match against Shropshire 

• Ladies Doubles                  -    Lucy and Sandra              lost    15-21  15-21
• Mens Doubles                  -   Nick and John                   won   21-8    21-14
• Mixed 1 Doubles              -    Olga and Peter                 won    21-9    21-9
• Mixed 2 Doubles              -    Sharon and Kevin            won    21-17  21-4                         

Match Score 3-1

Final Match of Saturday with much relieve of the team was against their old enemies Nottinghamshire

• Ladies Doubles                  -    Lucy and Sandra              lost    15-21  13-21
• Mens Doubles                  -   Peter and John                 won   21-14  21-19
• Mixed 1 Doubles              -    Olga and Nick                    lost     17-21  13-21
• Mixed 2 Doubles              -    Sharon and Kevin            won    21-17  17-21 and 21-13 

Match Score 2-2

Undefeated Day one, time to party and hopefully for Captain Sandra to prevent too bigger hangovers for a

10 O`Clock start on Sunday. Hic  Hic                                                                                   

Sunday

First match of the day was going to be against Warwickshire who had partied hard the night before,  with  Cambridgeshire hangovers prevented and muscles kept warm dancing the team were positive and up for the challenge

• Ladies Doubles                 -    Lucy and Sandra              lost     8-21   11-21
• Mens Doubles                  -   Nick and John                  lost    19-21   18-21
• Mixed 1 Doubles              -    Olga and Peter                 won   21-10  21-17
• Mixed 2 Doubles              -    Sharon and Kevin            won   21-12  21-14

Match Score 2-2

Second match against so far an undefeated team of Wiltshire and an unknown commodity for Cambridgeshire

• Ladies Doubles                  -    Lucy and Sandra              lost    13-21  12-21

This was followed by a outstanding performance and the match of the tournament by John and Nick

• Mens Doubles                  -   Nick and John                  won    18-12 21-19 and 21-13

This left it to the Mixed pairings to bring the result home, unfortunately this did not start well with Peter rubbing deep heat where beers cannot reach, giving the Cambs Over 50s ladies looking down from the balcony a sight not fit for sore eyes and playing against an injured opponent proved too much hence

• Mixed 1 Doubles              -    Olga and Peter                 lost    18-21  21-10 and 16-21    

Match score 2-2

But the pairing with 100% records to this date kept Cambridgeshire in the race

Mixed 2 Doubles              -    Sharon and Kevin            won   21-17  21-15

With one match to go Cambridgeshire remained undefeated with both Sharon and Kevin on 100%, so the pressure was on, so following a team talk it was decided to swap pairings around against Derbyshire

• Ladies Doubles                  -    Olga and Sandra             won   21-10  21-12
• Mens Doubles                  -    Peter  and John              won   21-6    19-21 and  21-19
• Mixed 1 Doubles              -    Sharon and Nick              won   21-14  14-21 and  21-12
• Mixed 2 Doubles              -    Lucy and Kevin                 won  21-16  21-11

Match score 4-0

Final positions

• Warwickshire: 10 points
• Nottinghamshire: 10 points
• Cambridgeshire: 9 points
• Wiltshire: 7 points

Followed by Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Shropshire

It was a great weekend of quality badminton, team undefeated  with a tremendous team spirit commented on by the organiser and here`s looking forward to 2016.

Many thanks team