Woodfield Table Tennis Club

Woodfield player Charlotte Bardsley travelled to Perth in Scotland as one of a 24 strong squad of England Schools players competing in the Home Nations International. Charlotte qualified for the England Schools team by virtue of her 2nd place in the U14 England Schools finals held at Tipton in April. She was partnered by Gauri Duhan from Hull in the team event who had come 1st. England fielded two girls and boys teams in each age category of U14, U16 and U18.  

After a long trip up to the Bells arena, the players had to already start the team matches on Friday evening. With 8 teams competing in one large group and the format of 4 singles and one doubles for each match it also meant an early start and late finish on Saturday. England were playing in a bright orange kit with strong set of yellow lights so the pictures are rather yellow!

• 

• 

• 

• 

England 1 and England 2 U14 girls both made strong starts against Scotland 1 and 2, but then they had to play each other which ended up being a key match in deciding the medal positions later in the competition. England 1 won that match 4-1 and so went into Saturday unbeaten along with Ireland and Wales. After defeating Isle of Man and Guernsey, England 1 then had a decisive wins against Ireland (4-1) and Wales (5-0) which meant that they were sure of Gold going into the last match with Scotland 1. Similarly England 2 U14 girls with Mollie Patterson and Katie Holt were also now able to secure silver with their wins over Ireland and Wales. The final positions for the girls U14 were England 1, England 2, Ireland.

On the Sunday it was the individual competitions which followed a group and then knockout competition. All 4 England girls were seeded in different groups and duly won their groups.  Charlotte was drawn to face Mollie Patterson from England 2 in the semis which won. She then had to wait almost an hour to find out who she would face in the final as the other side of the draw had many 5 set matches. In fact the last match of the whole tournament was to be Charlotte versus her team mate from the previous day, Gauri Duhan. This was a rerun of the final held at Tipton. Gauri had made a brilliant comeback from the brink of defeat in the semi-final where she overturned a 9-5 deficit in the 5th to run out a 15-13 winner against Kate Whelan of Ireland. She took that momentum into the final and took a quick first end. Charlotte fought back to level it 1-1 but then Gauri was able to edge a tight 3rd end in deuce. Charlotte regrouped again and was able to counter the heavy top spin from Gauri by taking the last two ends to 4 and 7 for her to take her first schools individual title.

Some great performances by all of the England teams over the three days of competition. Details of the full England results will be updated shortly on the ESTTA website.

A productive but a very long day for 13 year old Charlotte Bardsley. The first group matches started at 9am and she was still competing at 9:30pm in the doubles final. So after more than 12 hours of competition in what was a very warm sports arena, she came away from Ponds Forge with 3 national finals medals to add to her growing collection. Charlotte who competed in both U13 and U14 girls singles, came eventually 3rd in both of those events. She got through to both quarter-finals stages without dropping a set but then had more work to do in the quarters, coming through both with good 3-1 wins.

She lost out in a very tight semi-final to the eventual winner in the U13 and the same also occurred in the U14. In the doubles she made it to the final with her partner, Alice Dillon from Lancashire. This was the first time they had played together as a doubles pair and they quickly established an effective partnership, comfortably getting to the final where they just came short in the end.

Harry Fletcher competed in the U11 boys singles for his first time at the nationals. He was in a tough group and despite some great table tennis he wasn’t able to get into the knock-out stages of the competition this time.

Harry Fletcher, one of Woodfield’s up and coming young junior players was going through his paces at Woodfield this week in preparation for the U11-U14 England Nationals this weekend. Harry who is 10 years old, will be making his first appearance at this prestigious event which is being held at the Ponds Forge centre in Sheffield. Harry is one of the West Midlands players who will be battling it out in the U11 singles category. As he will face the challenge of some of the best young players in the country it will be a great learning experience for him.

Another young Woodfield player, Charlotte Bardsley is also participating in the tournament where she will play in the U13 & U14 singles and will partner Alice Dillon from Lancashire in the U14 doubles. We wish them both success at the weekend.

Woodfield win the Wolverhampton and District Handicap Knockout Trophy. Great achievement for the players, three of them being juniors.

Woodfield Junior players were in action at the Staffordshire County Closed event for Juniors held on Sunday 3rd May at Burton Uxbridge TTC.

After some excellent play, Jack Wood was able to claim 3 titles. He won the Cadet and Junior boys and then with his partner, Luke Gittins, he took the U18 doubles.

Georgia Harris also came away with some silverware after she also put in a great performance. She claimed two runner up spots in the Cadet girls and the Junior girls.

Clearly all of the hard work in the training sessions at Woodfield is really paying off for these young players

Charlotte Bardsley now ranked 3rd in the England Cadets was selected to represent England in the Home 6 Nations competition held at Cardiff from 13-15th of March, 2015.

Charlotte was partnered in the Cadet team by Surrey’s Isabelle Joubeily. It was the first time both players were representing England in the Home nations competition.

In the team event, both Charlotte and Isabelle played strong singles matches. The girls only lost one singles match each out of the ten they played. They also had an excellent partnership in doubles, winning every time they went to the table. This meant that as a team they were undefeated and claimed team gold for England.

For the individual competition, the draw and then the way the groups played out meant that Charlotte faced Isabelle in the quarter-finals, when both players were hoping to only meet later in the competition. Charlotte got off to a blistering start opening up an 8-0 lead in the first end. Though Isabelle fought back hard, Charlotte was able to hold on with a 3-0 win and move into the semis where she faced Mia O’Reilly Egan from Ireland. Again Charlotte made a strong start and despite Mia’s pressure in the 3rd end, Charlotte came out on top with a 3-0.  Another Irish girl faced her in the final, Kate Whelan who Charlotte had overcome in the team event with a 3-2 win after being behind 2-0. This time it was Kate who fell behind after the first end and it looked like Charlotte was on course for a double gold on her debut. However Kate levelled in the 2nd and used all of her experience to press home the change in momentum of the match, running out with a 3-1 victory to claim Gold.  Charlotte had to settle for Silver this time.