A traditional end of the season event for the Leicester & District League is the Rose Johnson Memorial Trophy, a handicap singles for ladies which has been ably organised by Shirley Pickering for many years.
This time the finals came with seven participants when one did not arrive, an awkward numbered which was dealt with by having an all-play-all of two games per match.
Karen Smith once again was giving points all round, ranging from nine up to 17 in games up to 21, and she has won the event several times in the past.
This time she came up initially against a player full of promise in Kelsey Andrews who has been finding her feet in Division Five, and received 16 against Smith.
Andrews is improving fast having embarked on a course to become a coach as well as setting up a “ladies only” weekly session to encourage the fairer sex. Armed with this she won the first match against Smith 21-13, 21-19 to set her on the way to an overall winning of the event as she won match after match 2-0.
Only at the end when she came across cadet Kinar Sheth did she falter when, receiving eight from her Division Two opponent, lost the first 21-17 but recovered to take the second 21-18 for an impressive 11-1 score overall.
So close were the rest that there was a dead-heat between three for second position, all three including Smith gaining a 6-6 score. No-one came away with nothing as one other player scored five points while the other two both secured four.
Standings: 11 Kelsey Andrews; 6 Karen Smith, Steph Burley, Maya Dehnen; 5 Kinar Sheth; 4 Gillian Wisdish, 4 Gemma Hargrave.
There were many excellent performances in the County Junior Championships organised by Terry Bown and held at Knighton Park.
In many of the events girls were mixed with boy in the initial play-offs with the final positions settled by the overall finishing positions. Not so the Boys’ Under-15s when Jack Rogers cruised through to the final where he defeated Oscar White 3-0 (11-5, 11-7, 11-5) and, having topped the Division Two averages, is looking increasingly promising.
It was not an ideal day for the Oscars as the Under-13s saw Shiven Arora do very much what Rogers did in the older age event to reach the final and then defeated Oscar Bentley by an equally impressive margin at 3-0 (11-7, 11-8, 11-1).
The Under-11 Boys’ was much closer. Having only just got the better of Alana Richardson early on 3-2 (6-11, 11-8, 5-11, 11-9, 11-3) Oliver Wynne reached the final in which Edward Brown provided an excellent opponent before Wynne squeezed home 3-2 (6-11, 11-6, 5-11, 12-10, 14-12).
Other winners were: Girls’ Under-11: Alana Richardson; Girls’ Under-13: Frankie Hallam; Girls’ Under-15: Ella Parmar-Saville; Girls’ Under-18: Ella Parmar-Saville.