NORTHAMPTONSHIRE ON THEIR WAY TO THE PREMIER DIVISION
The final weekend of Junior Division 1A took place at Westfield TTC on Saturday 1st Feb and it was left up until the last round of matches to decide the winner. The Northamptonshire team of Nicole Bird, Bhavika Mistry, Miles Chan, Alex Ramsden and Ben Tombs secured promotion to the Premier Division with a final 6-4 win over second placed Lancashire.
Northamptonshire took the first match honours as Chan beat Alex Storey in three tight deuce games. Lancashire then raced into a 3-1 lead with Joel Webb accounting for Ben Tombs, over five games, after using a well placed time out early in the fourth game. Emily Bolton proved too strong for Mistry winning in straight games and the Lancashire No. 1 boy Robert Barker made short work of Alex Ramsden winning 3-0.
Northamptonshire bounced back to level the match when Bird came back from 1-2 down against Beth Farnsworth and a match point against her to win and Ben Tombs then followed suit against Alex Storey, after initially finding his style of backhand pimples and forehand attack awkward to play against. Farnsworth took the advantage over Mistry after two close first games and Chan then pulled Northamptonshire back to level beating England No. 17 Junior boy Barker 3-1. So the division was all to be decided on the last two matches.
Handling the pressure extremely well England No. 22 Bird secured a well deserved 3-1 win over the much higher ranked England No. 6 Emily Bolton and so it was left to 13 year old Alex Ramsden to finally secure promotion with a 3-1 win over Webb.
Having just lost out on promotion to Cleveland last season, after count back, Northamptonshire will be very pleased to have finally made it to the top division of Junior County Championships.
| Juniors Division 1A | |||||||||
| County | P | W | D | L | F | A | GF | GA | PTS |
| Northamptonshire 1 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 55 | 15 | 173 | 79 | 14 |
| Lancashire 1 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 51 | 19 | 176 | 80 | 11 |
| Staffordshire 1 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 38 | 32 | 138 | 117 | 9 |
| Hertfordshire | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 38 | 32 | 142 | 130 | 9 |
| Cheshire 1 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 31 | 39 | 117 | 130 | 6 |
| Warwickshire | 7 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 29 | 41 | 116 | 153 | 5 |
| Worcestershire | 7 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 19 | 51 | 79 | 162 | 1 |
| South Yorkshire | 7 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 19 | 51 | 82 | 172 | 1 |
Report by John Alsop
County Championships Committee (February 6, 2014)