Youth Round-Up: Badminton and Reading Blue Coat

Our younger sportsmen have continued their busy schedules as rugby posts and football pitches have been replaced by cricket wickets…

Badminton

Last week, the four best badminton playing schools in London competed to decide who are the best teams in the city. The four schools included Copper’s, Wilson’s, Isleworth and Hampton. We had done well to make it this far in the competition.

We started off by playing Coppers, who were much stronger than us and we lost all our games. We then played Wilson’s, with the same results. However, for the third and four play-off against Isleworth, we had a different result. We won the first two games, making it so that we only had to win one more to win overall.

We then lost two close games, making the last game the deciding game. I happened to be playing doubles with Naavya S in this game and it was really close. The opponents were tough but we fought hard, making it 20-20, leaving the last point the deciding point for the third or the fourth place. We won it, winning the team a well deserved bronze medal.

Overall, this was an exciting and new experience, especially with the fact that the venue for the tournament was in the Olympic badminton training ground.

By Keiran Bouwmeester-Reid

Football

On Saturday the U13 squads played against Reading Blue Coat school. The D team won 3-0 with Meher Baga scoring all three goals; the C team won 4-2, the B team 3-0 and the A team drew 3-3.

Reading Bluecoat were tough to beat but, it ended up being a successful end to a long season.

By Krishan Singah

Rugby

It was our last tournament of this season and it was the biggest out of all of the ones we had gone to. We kicked off our first game against The Oratory School and played some really good rugby and won 25-10.

Mr Gray told us the next game was a tough one and that we had to play with the right attitude and mindset. We started off struggling to control their really big lad but eventually we found our rhythm and won in emphatic style with a 20-0 win which helped us mentally especially as we hadn’t conceded one try in that game.

The next game we comfortably won 45-5 and finally it came to the hardest game of our group against Blundell’s School which was a rugby school from around Exeter. We started off sloppily and conceded two tries but we never let our heads drop for a second and stood firm before firing back two tries just before the first half ended. Our spirits were up and we were determined to win this game. We played excellently and scored one more try in the second half to win 15-10.

After the match ended, we found out Mr Knibbs was out watching us play which lifted us up for our final game which was another tough one against Wellend Park Academy. What a match this turned out to be! We started off poorly conceding a try in the first minute but we fought back almost immediately to make it level again. We were exchanging try after try. The first half ended 20-15 to them. Mr Mobb-Smith and Mr Gray gave us a huge team talk at the break and the parents there supported us incredibly. We conceded another a try two minutes into the second half but once again we didn’t let our heads drop. We fought back with all our might and brought it back level. It was the final play and we had just won a scrum. We kept on passing the ball quickly and eventually broke their well organised defence. It was very dramatic as there were a bunch of players piled up on one another and the referee on the floor analysing if the ball had touched the try line. We waited patiently for him to announce his verdict…AND WE HAD DONE IT!

We made an unbelievable comeback and the referee blew the whistle straight after we scored. Everyone went ballistic and was jumping up and down. We had won our group and made our parents and school proud.

At the end, we all huddled up and spoke about how far we had come over this month and Mr Knibbs was ecstatic with our desire to win. What a day it had been!

By Saganan Thuraisingham