Third seeds Sienna Jetha and Larry Trumpauskas took home the trophies and boasted 100% records to boot as the Cadet National Cup played to a pulsating finish.
Trumpauskas dropped only two games all weekend, and Jetha only six, to top the standings at the end of the round-robin event for the top-ranked players in the age group.
Top seeds Maliha Baig and Jakub Piwowar took the respective silvers, with second seed Bethany Ellis taking girls’ bronze and fourth seed Ralph Pattison completing the boys’ podium.
There was heartbreak for girls’ ninth seed Ella Pashley, who dazzled with seven victories, only to miss out on a medal in a three-way countback with Baig and Ellis.
Click here for the full boys’ results
Click here for the full girls’ results
Back at the start of the day, Pattison had moved into medal contention in the first match – round 6 overall –with a four-game win over second seed Ollie Maric-Murray, while Fred Jones continued his good form from day one with a victory over Ben Dunkley, keeping him on the fringes of the race.
Maric-Murray lost further ground as he was somewhat blown away by Trumpauskas, winning just 11 points across three games in round 7. Two of the other contenders met and it was Piwowar who prevailed over Pattison, stepping up the power in games three and four after two deuce games at the start.
Round 8 saw the big move in the medal shake-up, Trumpauskas taking a 2-0 lead over Piwowar and converting it into a 3-1 triumph after his opponent appeared to have stolen the momentum in the third.
Maric-Murray rekindled his hopes by edging past Joseph Cooper in a match in which neither was in the mood to budge – the final reckoning was 9-11, 11-7, 3-11, 15-13, 17-15 for Maric-Murray as both saw match points come and go.
There were two other five-setters in the round, Jones sneaking past Isaac Kingham 12-10 in the fifth to keep himself in the frame, while Joseph Dennison was an 11-9 in the fifth winner over Dunkley.
In the final round, Trumpauskas had little difficulty rubber-stamping gold with a three-set win over winless Francesco Bonato, while Piwowar made sure of silver by overcoming Maric-Murray in four and Pattison saw off Jones in three.
In the girls’ event, Pashley had caught the eye on day one and, with day two bringing a less daunting fixture list on paper, would have had an eye on the medals.
She certainly seized the day, winning in three with no undue alarms against Watkinson and Mia Lakhani in the first two rounds of the day.
Jetha made her first move in round 7, seeing off second seed Ellis in a surprisingly one-sided clash (6, 5, 6).
In the same round, there were 3-2 wins for Naomi Coker over Mabel Shute – who put in a fine comeback before Coker won it 11-6, 11-9, 8-11, 12-14, 11-6 – and for Rachael Iles over Watkinson, who led 2-1 and came close to registering her first victory before missing out 11-7 in the fifth.
Much like the boys’ event, the big match turned out to be in the penultimate round when Jetha and Baig faced off. It was a high-quality match but Jetha pushed the pedal to the floor in the fifth to win it 11-3 and complete a scoreline of 11-5, 10-12, 11-13, 11-8, 11-3.
Pashley beat Coker in four to stand on the threshold of a medal. But Ellis also kept up her bid with a four-set win over Mabel Shute.
And so to the final round. While Jetha was sealing gold and an unbeaten weekend with a four-set win over Kate Watkinson, the battle for the remaining medals came down to two matches.
Pashley did all she could as she beat Shute in four. Baig was taking on Ellis and, when she had two match points in the fifth, it looked as though Pashley would take bronze and Ellis would miss out.
But Ellis reeled off four points in a row – frustrating her opponent and snatching the final medal.
Final standings
Boys: 1 Larry Trumpauskas, 2 Jakub Piwowar, 3 Ralph Pattison, 4 Joseph Dennison, 5 Fred Jones, 6 Ollie Maric-Murray, 7 Joseph Cooper, 8 Issac Kingham, 9 Benjamin Dunkley, 10 Francesco Bonato
Girls: 1 Sienna Jetha, 2 Malihi Baig, 3 Bethany Ellis, 4 Ella Pashley, 5 Rachael Iles, 6 Naomi Coker, 7 Connie Dumelow, 8 Mia Lakhani, 9 Mabel Shute, 10 Kate Watkinson
