Junior County Teams

Huge congratulations to Nikhil Pulikkottil, who took all three titles at the U15 National Championships just before Christmas. Winning any National title is an amazing performance so to get the Grand Slam of titles is quite amazing.

Tournament Details 

Fixtures for this years Shires League (junior matches) are starting to appear on Tournament Software

https://be.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/clubmatches.aspx?id=62EDE6EE-795F-4FFB-B3B4-98B3F6E609B0&cid=6

Congratulations to our Under-13 Team who came 3rd in the 2024 Shires League Finals held yesterday in Loughborough, and many thanks to Team Managers Stuart and Ram for achieving our best result at this age group since 2015.

It was a group stage format this year, and Essex started with a 16-4 win over Herts before losing 5-15 to Kent to come 2nd in Group A. This put us in contention 3rd/4th place and we eventually came 3rd after a close-fought 12-8 win over Leicestershire, who had finished 2nd in Group B.

Thanks to Mark and Jonty Russ for organizing the Shires League this season. That is the 2023-24 season done now, we are now looking forward to the 2024-5 season which starts in Sept!

Congratulations to the Under-15 Team who came runner-up in the 2024 Shires League Finals yesterday in Loughborough, and many thanks to Team Manager Ranjit for steering the team to our best result in nearly a decade. Congratulations to Kent who won the event and fielded a team with huge strength in depth. 

At the end of each Shires League season, the the top 8 counties are invited to the 'finals' to compete for top place. The counties qualifying this year for Under-15 were: Avon, Essex, Herts, Kent, Leicestershire, Notts, Surrey, and Warks. Essex started with a close-fought 11-9 win over Surrey, which put us in in the top half of the draw. We then beat Leicestershire 13-7 to reach the final, before losing 4-16 to Kent.

Thanks to Mark and Jonty Russ for organizing the Shires League so well this season and to Sue Spink for refereeing.

Nikhil Pulikkottil had the honour of leading an England U13 team in friendly matches against Japan and China, played on the All England courts.

See https://www.badmintonengland.co.uk/yonex-host-legacy-match-in-birmingham/ for more

Essex juniors enjoyed playing the Under-18 Inter-Counties Tournament (ICT) this week in Nottingham.

ICT is a residential tournament, and counties play each other over 4 days to achieve an overall position. This year, 29 counties entered. Essex started out with wins over Staffordshire (9-1) and Lancashire (7-3), followed by further wins over Northumberland (7-3) and Derbyshire (9-1).

Then we lost to top seeds Yorkshire (1-9), which put us in the running for positions 5-8. In this group we lost to Middlesex (5-5, losing out on game difference), Leicestershire (3-7) and Nottinghamshire (2-8), so we came 8th overall, which is an improvement on last year's 14th position. Congratulations to Leinster who were the overall winners this year and Berkshire who were runners-up.

Many thanks to Team Manager Michael, coach Brandon and Ying who together made up the support team and well done to all of the players.

The National Schools competition has reached the South-East regional finals stage with Essex schools winning through in three events. Colchester County High School for Girls and King Edwards, Chelmsford will compete at the National finals on 20th / 21st April.

 Entry for the Colchester 2* is now closed. The event will be played at Colchester Sports Park on Saturday 27th January 2024.

Further details will be posted here.