The Northumberland Club in Jesmond held it’s annual Junior open recently with the best juniors from around the region descending on Newcastle to fight it out for the trophies. Northern had a good representation with 40 of the 90 entries being from our club. Our four top performers of the weekend were Matthew Thompson , Megan Evans , Harriet Wight and Shae Paterson, who all made it to their respective category finals. Ten year old Shae was the first to make it to her final , where she was up against the home favourite, Amelia Sherlock. Shae collided with a wall in the first game , banging her head quite badly and needing an injury break. This knocked her out of her stride and she lost the first two games, but she showed grit and determination to comeback strongly and win the next three games to win the under 11 girls championship. This is Shae’s first competition win , but we are sure it will be the first of many!
Matthew Thompson made the final of the under 15 boys with a good semi final win over fellow county player Sam Aiston and in the final he met Tom Walsh from Tynemouth , who he also played in the final of our own junior open in February. On that occasion , he lost out 3 – 1. Once again it was nip and tuck between these evenly matched boys but at 2 games all and 7 – 1 down in the fifth it looked like Matthew was destined to lose again. Matthew, however , is very resilient and Tom only won one more point as Matthew took the fifth 11 – 8 to take the title.
Megan Evans and Harriet Wight are two of our most exciting prospects and as the top two seeds in the Girls Under 15 competition they comfortably made their way to meet each other in the final. Harriet was out of sorts at the start and Megan quickly took a 2 – 0 lead, Harriet came back in the third to win it 11 – 9 and suddenly the momentum was with her. It took immense resolve by Megan to keep calm and win a close fourth game 11 – 9 to take the title.
So three more junior open titles for Northern juniors ... it has been a tremendous season!
