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Woodfield member Charlotte Bardsley came back from the Liverpool senior Grand-Prix with three winners trophies. In only her second senior Grand-Prix. Charlotte was undefeated in the Band 3, Band 2 and U21 competitions. Charlotte had to fight hard with several 5 set victories, a notable one was against the number 1 seed and Scottish Champion, Gillian Edwards in the semi-final of the Band 2. Charlotte came from behind, being 2-1 down in sets and then from 6-3 down in the 5th, finishing it 7-11. Charlotte won 16 matches out of 18 during the weekend, the two losses in the main singles draw.

The Senior Schools International Table Tennis Tournament 2016 was held at Limerick University in Ireland. The best players from Ireland and Great Britain qualified to represent their respective countries in this event through county and then national tournaments.

Charlotte Bardsley started her qualification back in January, winning the Worcestershire schools title and then finishing as runner up in the England Schools national competition in April. This meant she was selected to represent England in both the U14 team and individual competitions.

In the team competition, along with her partner Mollie Patterson from Norfolk, they were unbeaten in all their matches to claim the gold medal. Charlotte maintained her fantastic form in the singles and won another gold medal by defeating her team mate in a thrilling final. These two golds are added to the two she won last year when the competition was held in Perth, Scotland.

This weekends achievements have been a perfect preparation for her next tournament in July which is the European Youth Championships being held in Zagreb, Croatia. We wish her and Team England every success at that tournament

Megan hits Gold at the Inter-Region Championships

All of the hard work that young Woodfield player, Megan Jones has put into her training with head coach Chris Tarr, paid off handsomely at the weekend. Megan was representing the West Midlands at the Inter-Region Finals held in Kettering for U11’s. On Saturday it was the team event and Megan with her partner Erin Darwen won two out of three group matches. However on Sunday, Megan had an even better day and really showed what she can do by remaining unbeaten on the day, which saw her take the individual gold in the U11’s. In the final, Megan beat Isabelle Lacorte 3-0 (11,9 11,8 11,9).

This is a fantastic achievement for Megan in only her 2nd major finals event. Getting a Gold medal is a great reward for all the practice and preparation she has done in the past weeks and months.

This season there is a new competition for Cadet and Junior players called the National Cup. Players ranked 1-6 nationally are automatically granted a place and then the National Coaches select up to 4 more players to attend the round robin format tournament. Each match is also best of 7. Charlotte Bardsley had qualified for both cadet and junior events by her ranking.

The cadet competition was held at the WISE campus in Bristol. Charlotte was seeded two and over the two days of the competition won 7 out of 9 matches. Denise Payet won all of her matches and so secured the gold medal. Another player, Mollie Patterson, also won 7 matches so the silver medal was decided on head to head count back between Charlotte and Mollie. Since Mollie had won what was a very close match in the 7th end in deuce, she claimed the silver with Charlotte getting the bronze.

The competition then switched to the Junior event two weeks later at Milton Keynes. In this competition Charlotte was seeded 5th. Her first match of the competition was against the cadet gold medalist Denise Payet. Charlotte reversed the result of the cadet competition with a convincing 4-2 victory. She then played Letitia McMullan, a player she had never beaten before. Charlotte scored another good victory, this time 4-0. In the 3rd round she faced Mollie Patterson the cadet silver medalist and came back from a 0-2 deficit to make it 4-2 and three wins out of three. England cadet, Jasmin Wong was next up and again Charlotte played her best table tennis to make it four out of four with a 4-0 win. The last match of the day was against one of the top England juniors, Kate Cheer who had beaten Charlotte in the East Midlands 4* junior semi final. The sets were shared at 2-2 but then Charlotte exerted her control on the match and won the 5th and 6th ends, to make it an incredible 5 out of 5 for the day. With top seed Emily Bolton having a surprise loss to the 6th seed Gauri Duhan, this meant Charlotte ended day 1 in first position.

Day two started with a key match against Emily Bolton who was clearly fired up after her loss the previous evening. Charlotte found it hard to settle into the match and it ended with a 0-4 loss to Emily. However Charlotte knew that if she won her remaining 3 matches she was assured of silver and if Emily slipped up then Gold could still be hers. In the end, Charlotte did win all of her three matches including a strong performance against Gauri 4-1 but Emily also won her matches. This meant that Emily got gold, Charlotte silver and Gauri the bronze.

This is now the 3rd masters type event for Charlotte and each time she has come away with a medal.

Woodfield’s boys team had been fancied to do well in division 3B of the Junior British League. Unfortunately two injuries, one of them serious, put paid to any hopes they might have had of mounting a push for promotion.

With Joey Chen and Lloyd Taylor both out with finger injuries (the latter requiring two operations) a two-man team was always going to be up against it over the first weekend.

And so it proved. George Carroll managed to take the highly-rated Scottish number two junior Calum Morrison to five and Jack Wood played steadily throughout but it’s hard to give your opponents a two-match start in this format, especially as the division looked stronger than it was last year.

To their credit, the two lads did pull off a surprise win against London Academy and, boosted by the return of Joey Chen, hopes were high for the second weekend. Joey marked his return to competition with an excellent win against Alex Tilley from Halton, the eventual champions. But after that, none of the Woodfield players really got going and a scrappy draw was all they had to show for their efforts from the second round of matches at Derby’s excellent Arena venue.

Two other Woodfield junior players were also in action at the Derby Arena.

Charlotte Bardsley playing for Burton Uxbridge 1 helped them come runners up in the Premier Girls Division. Charlotte scored a double over England no 1 cadet Denise Payet and was the only player who managed to defeat the highly rated Hungarian Junior, Kitty Korda, over the two weekends.

Luke Gittins who like Charlotte also trains at Woodfield, played for Wood Green in Division 1. Clearly the training with Des at Woodfield is really paying off for Luke as in the 2nd weekend he scored two huge wins. First against Luke Carter of Fusion who is over 200 places higher in the junior ranking and then another big win against Will Ibbitson of St Marys Hull who is 185 places above him.