Cippenham’s boys’ and girls’ teams found the going tough during the first weekend
of matches in the Junior British League at Wolverhampton. The girls, playing in the
Premier Division, managed two draws from their five matches and lie in fifth place
at the half-way stage while the boys are one point and one position worse off in
Division One.
The girls only suffered one big defeat to league leaders Ormesby, from Middlesbrough
and one of the most famous clubs in English table tennis history, to whom they lost
1-5. Even in that match, Charleigh Kirby only lost 2-3 to Jessica Dawson and Natalie
Slater conceded a walkover to England number one Karina Lefevre. Cippenham’s win
came from Haylee Potts over Dawson. Otherwise there were two 3-3 draws and two 2-4
losses. In one of these, against Irish team Ballina, Cippenham led 2-1 through Natalie
and Charleigh but were unable to take full advantage. Natalie, who won four of her
nine matches over the weekend, is ranked 7 in England and was signed by Cippenham,
along with England number 12 Haylee, to support Charleigh in a team of Premier Division
standard. Haylee won four out of ten and Charleigh three out of ten. In the other
defeat, against Cliffedale Chandlers, Natalie and Haylee beat Emily Bates and Jasmine
Ould respectively. This was an especially good win for Natalie over the England number
two ranked player.
The two points that Cippenham did pick up, against Burton Uxbridge and Draycott &
Long Eaton were both the result of full team efforts as each girl picked up a win
in each match. The match sequence was identical also. Natalie beat the opponents’
number two and then, with Cippenham 1-3 down, Haylee and Charleigh both came good
to rescue points for the Slough club. Charleigh had her best result in the final
set of the match against Burton Uxbridge when she downed Laura Robinson, eight places
higher in the national ranking list, 3-0.
Local star Edward Mitchell found the challenge of being number one in a team in Division
One too much and won only one of his ten matches over the weekend. Even so, Eddie
only lost once to a player beaten by one of his team-mates. Michael Ho, who has been
training at Cippenham for several months, did much better from the number two slot
and won half of his matches while George Downing, brought in from outside the Club’s
core membership to add support for Eddie and Michael, won three times.
Cippenham’s one point came in the 3-3 draw with Horsham and, just as with the girls
in their drawn matches, the boys came back from 1-3 down. Eddie beat Stephen Eckford
and then, Michael beat Ricki Weston and George also beat Eckford to secure the result.
Barnet, Team Peniel and Burton Uxbridge all managed to beat Cippenham 4-2 with Eddie
twice going down 2-3 in the match against the Staffordshire club. The other result
was a 0-6 defeat by DHS Greenhouse Progress 2.
