Northumberland’s Under 14 team travelled north of the border on Easter Sunday to play in the annual Lothian team event.  The team, most of whom were at least one year younger than the U14 limit, was: Charlotte Graham, Ellen Davison, Lucy Dodd and Katrina Ho; Hugh Twelves, Jack Tilbury, James Dodd and Matthew Short.  Team managers Karen Davison and David Graham sent us the following report.

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And so, another year gone already and it’s off to Nottingham for the 52^nd running of the Under 18 Inter County Tournament.  With a young team and lacking several of the stronger players of recent years, we had no great expectations other than not finishing in the bottom group.  After a tough start we had a great finish with a run of 5 matches undefeated, placing us 27^th of the 35 competing teams, only two places down on the 2016 result.  County Coach Rob Wetherell was pretty pleased with the overall performance, as were his assistants Ellie Roberts (recently qualified at Level 2) and David Murray.

The team was Abby Grogan, Anna Railton, Maddy Atkinson, Rachel Bogan and Sarah Bambrick; Alex Jay, Ashraf Alam, George Moran, Jamie Tinnion and Melvin Cherian.  Four of them were new to the ICT and this can be very daunting, given that the atmosphere is always very vibrant and noisy. Continue reading →

Our Under 18 team have just returned from Nottingham where the 52nd Inter County Tournament took place in the run-up to Easter.  The team travelled back, buoyed by their success in the second half of the competition, having notched up five successive wins.  They “only” finished 27th of the 35 competing teams, but given our relatively limited playing resources, this was a fine result and pretty much as good as we could have expected.  A fuller report will follow shortly.

The team was Abby Grogan, Anna Railton, Maddy Atkinson, Rachel Bogan & Sarah Bambrick; Alex Jay, Ashraf Alam, George Moran, Jamie Tinnion & Melvin Cherian.  They were managed by Richard Taylor & Ellie Roberts and accompanied by coaches Rob Wetherell and David Murray.  Daniel Tinnion also joined us at the event where he worked as a volunteer Young Official.

The Anglo-Scottish League event for Under 15s took place this weekend at Tyneside Badminton Centre, with six teams from north and south of the border competing.  Yorkshire brought a strong team and took the honours with their 12-3 win over Lothian in the deciding match.  Northumberland, with a very young and inexperienced team, found the going quite tough but still produced some encouraging performances on the way to finishing in fifth place, just being pipped by Cumbria. Continue reading →

Northumberland’s U17 team has just been down to Sheffield for the second round of the North Midway.  As there was a late team withdrawal from this round, the format of the day was set to be a round robin of six counties.   Manager Lizzie Jerdan’s report follows and documents what turned into a superb achievement for the county’s team. Continue reading →

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