Knighton Park take top honours in the junior league

LEICESTERSHIRE has maintained an excellent record for junior coaching for upwards of 60 years, from when the orientation was firmly towards the County until now, when it has swung completely towards the clubs, writes John Bowness.

Back then it worked perfectly with County Junior teams winning national titles as well as having significant presence in the national individual rankings. Nowadays the biggest problem seems to be retaining the players’ interest.

Not that it is for the want of trying, with Leicester having the biggest National Junior League in the country and, along with the senior league, has just finished with 28 teams involved in seven divisions and 41 players in the final two sessions which are combined to find the victors.

With three out of four teams involved it is not surprising that one of Knighton Park’s was top of Division One, although in this case their second team as a result of slightly better consistency. KP were, in fact, one, two and three.

Taking top honours individually was KP2’s Aiden Cheng who won seven from 10 with team-mate Dillon Kearney second, with six from 10.

No-one was unbeaten but others doing well without quite playing enough sets were Roma Morjaria and Wai-Fung Mak, both KP1.

George Ward Barwell B won Division Two, mainly thanks to an unbeaten return by Saxon Beardmore, who won all 12 sets he played, his team just tip-toeing ahead of Winstanley A with the same points but one set better. Alfie Purple won six from eight for Winstanley.

Another undefeated return won the honours in Division Three for Sport in Desford A, who had Joel Moulder in cracking form with Dylan Mahtani (KP4) not far behind, having won 10 of his 12 sets.

Others unbeaten include Charles Rowell and Satveer Chohan, who spearheaded Market Bosworth to the Division Four title as well as Niam Kotecha, who led KP9 to the top of Division Five, and Neel Deshpanda (KP11) in Division Seven.

It is good to see Fleckney getting more involved with coaching juniors and Miriam Wohl, nominated by her club as a Volunteer of the Year recently, reports a squad of 14 she and Andy Smith are coaching weekly, with 11 aged between eight and 15, together with three adult beginners.