Following on from the Inter Regional Beach Championships a few weeks ago, it was back to the Cardiff Beach Centre this weekend for this years U19 International Open. For regions and nations, competing this year was ourselves, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England U17 and Gibraltar.
With the slightly older age group, we were able to welcome back a number of our Inter Regional Beach team members from last year, and with some of our U17 members selected to represent England, this opened up opportunities for others to join the Southwest squads this year.
In the Girls competition, at the end of day one, the SW girls topped Pool B with England heading Pool A, and everything was pointing towards a SW v England showdown Final on Sunday.
With the ever changing wet and windy conditions, we were edged out by Scotland 1 who handled the condition really well on Sunday, leaving us in the 3rd / 4th playoff. An injury to one of our players also meant we had to unfortunately concede a match, leaving us at the end of the day in fourth place.
SWVA Girls
Pair 1: Alexia Morosanu & Heidi Bright
Pair 2: Louise Wiener & Charlie Chambers
In the Boys event, SW finished the Saturday in third place in Pool A, against some strong hitting teams. The Knockout stages moved us up into the top half of the event but unfortunately the final eluded us and the boys joined the girls with another fourth place finish.
SWVA Boys
Pair 1: Harry Brett & Tom Lycett
Pair 2: Isaac Gibbs & Sergey Najafov
Last year it was 34 degrees, this year, sunny spells on Saturday but Sunday was damp and wet all day. Everyone did really well in the ever challenging conditions, even Gibraltar who had never played in the rain before (or anything less than 30 degs).
And a special big thankyou to our helpers and coaches Ben Fairweather, Dan Mrowiec, Abbie Sinclair-Thomson, Dave Reece & Dave Gunter.
