Men's Division 1 - crucial win against Kennet A
In one of the crunch matches of the season, the Saint's Mens A team took on Kennet A at Elstree on 29th January in a match that they had to win to keep in the running for the championship.
The only team to have beaten our premier players earlier this season, the Saints were out for revenge but with a depleted team through injury and holiday commitments things were going to be tough.
A re-arranged Saints team saw Tony pairing up with Kevin, Ross playing with Gareth, and Andy and Pete making up the final pair. Each pair played their part and pushed the opposition to the limit.
Tony and Kevin made the Kennet pairs work hard in their games and although they quite didn't manage to get a rubber, they succeeded in helping to tire them out ready for the Ross and Gazza show!
Ross and Gareth were the star pair of the evening and confidently won all three rubbers leaving the match delicately poised going in to the last rubber 4-4.
The result of the match rested with the renewal of the old partnership of Andy and Pete. The pair held their nerve (and surprisingly held their serves too!) and in a thrilling 3rd end victory, the Saints emerged as victors.
Compliments go to the Kennet team who made the Saints fight for every game, and commiserations to Steve Pennington who played his best for Kennet, only to find that it wasn't good enough!!
Robin Deasley Mixed Doubles Badminton Tournament
The Newbury & District Badminton Association's annual mixed doubles tournament was this year promoted by St Mary's Badminton Club.
The tournament was held on
Sunday 16th November
at Elstree School Sports Hall.
Pairs were handicapped according to ability so that everyone had as equal chance as possible to win.
We had a fantastic entry this year with 16 pairs split into two groups of 8.
In a very close Group A, joint favourites Steve Heath and Mary-Anne Stevens took the top place but last year's champions Andy Norman and Lucy Barton were beaten by the St Mary's/Newbury pair of Pete Braithwaite and Karlie Dunn who ended up with the same number of points but squeezed past them into the semi-finals based on the number of games won rule which had to be applied.
In Group B, Saint's pair Matt Benians and Rachel Elms played really well to come really close to winning a semi-final place but just missed out in 3rd place. Martin Hill and Amanda Marsden of Pegasus and Jon Schofield and Karen Harrison of Shaw claimed the 1st two places in the group.
The winner of Group A played the runners-up in Group B and vice-versa in the semis.
Steve and Mary-Anne managed to power through Jon and Karen in a good close game.
Martin and Amanda joined them in the final after a solid performance against Pete and Karlie, the latter pair struggling to get going in the game.
The final saw a great game with Steve and Mary-Anne playing Martin and Amanda. With contrasting styles, it was anyone's guess which pair would win but Steve's deadly powerful smash couldn't get through the Pegasus pair who counter-attacked with some great play and, once they started to dominate the net, emerged as this year's champions.
So congratulations to this year's champions:
Amanda Marsden and Martin Hill!
Thank you to all the people that helped St Mary's organise the tournament including:
- the Handicapping Committee who did a great job - there were a lot of very tight games
- Brian and Margaret Mason who did all the hard work printing all the slips and running the tournament
- Gareth Jones who helped organise the tournament
- Matt Benians who kept score in the final
- Everybody that contributed prizes for the raffle
- and of course everybody that took part in the tournament