From Left to Right, Back Row, Lesley Sanders (Team Manager), Jess Budd, Cerys Hickinbottom, Gemma Bayntun, Emma Lawes, and Katie White.
Front Row, Sam Crossley, Kim McCabe, Ben Sanders, Rob Armstrong and Martin Crossley

 

17-21 ICC Hatfield 2008

 The Avon Team: Rob Armstrong, Gemma Bayntun, Martin Crossley, Jess Budd, Sam Crossley, Cerys Hickinbottom, Kim McCabe, Emma Lawes, Ben Sanders, Katie White.

Avon sent a team to be proud of to the 17-21 Inter Counties Championship in Hatfield last weekend.

All ten players were magnificent and great company as I’m sure Steve and Brenda Bird would agree. They showed an excellent attitude towards their badminton and their fellow team members and I’m sure that if there had been a trophy for the best and noisiest support for a county, we would have won it - no-one had much of a voice left by the end of the weekend!

The only ‘sour’ point of the weekend occurred on the way to the tournament when Rob, being slightly over enthusiastic, stuffed a handful of ‘Toxic Waste’ sweets into his mouth, only to find that ‘extra sour’ meant exactly that!

The cheering certainly paid off in our crucial match against Bucks on the first day in which the team voted to play only their strongest players. As a result we won 5-1, which took us into the top ten rather than the bottom eight.

Ben and Gemma played some amazing badminton in the singles, Ben beating Scott Sankey in a very exciting singles, which had us all on the edge of our seats. Having been 16-20 down in the 3 rd set, he won six points in a row to take the match 22-20.

Gemma played her best singles ever, beating Vicky Norris 21-15, 21-18.

Both level doubles games went to three sets, Martin and Kim winning in three and Katie and Emma narrowly losing in a well-fought three setter.

Finally we took both mixed to claim a 5-1 victory.

After an evening celebrating Kim’s 19th Birthday in true golfing style – luckily without the ‘Clubbing’, we faced Devon in the knock-out competition on the second day. They proved to be too strong for us, although Gemma’s singles and Kim and Ben’s doubles both went to three sets.

This meant we were playing for positions 9 and 10 against Sussex. A very close match ensued, neck and neck to the end, which we finally drew 3-3 but unfortunately lost by one set.

So we came 10th out of the 18 counties participating.

An excellent result – well done everyone!

Report from Lesley Sanders.