Nottingham Trent University retained their men’s and women’s team titles at the BUCS championships at Surrey University’s Sports Park.
The Nottingham team of Chris Doran, Sean Cullen, Emran Hussain and Daniel Lowe beat Leeds (Kim Daybell, Adam Bleakley, Reece Tan, Steve Mcloughlin) 9-2, although Leeds started with a massive handicap by having to concede the first four matches having been caught in traffic on the M1 and M25. There are no concessions for lateness because of the tight schedule on the day, with the BUCS netball competition immediately following the table tennis.
Daybell was awarded man of the match for his fightback to keep the score at a respectable level.
Nottingham Trent will go on to play in the European Championships in Rotterdam in July.
And the Nottingham Trent women’s team made it a double triumph, Emma Vickers and Alice Loveridge beating their neighbours from Nottingham University, Yolande King and Maria Lebedeva, 5-0.
However, Loveridge will miss Rotterdam because she will be playing for Guernsey at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
BUCS held their “Big Wednesday” yesterday at the Sports Park of Surrey University. Over 40 team finals were played through the day till late at night. A misnomer really because a similar day was spent on Tuesday with most of the same sports but at a different level. BUCS team competitions are like the ETTA County Championships with divisions going up to premier in each area both for men and women. The divisions are played out and then there is a knockout for the premier teams called a Championship and for the lower teams called a Trophy event. The finals for the Trophy were on Tuesday and for the Championships on Wednesday. For the women the match is best of 5 and for the men best of 16 with both events played to a result.
In the Men’s Trophy for lower-ranked teams, the Sussex line-up of Daniel Li, Jay Loo, Lai Pilot and Hugo Chan beat Sheffield Hallam (Louis Havenhand, Sam Nolan, Luke Tattersall, Dale Parnell) 9-5.
In the Women’s Trophy, Cambridge (Jessy Zhou and Maitreyi Shivkumar) beat Manchester (Amandine Roose, ShuiQing Wei) 4-1