Ormeau Kids @ Euro Mini Championships Strasbourg, France
The Irish boys and girls team has just returned from a successful trip to the Euro Mini Championships in Strasbourg France. This event is the highlight for any kid under the ages of 12 years old with Europes strongest in representation plus a few invited countries like Japan and USA!
Overall the Ormeau kids made up 4 of the 6 players representing Ireland and they all showed great fight, determination and improvement over the 3 days of competition. Ormeau representatives included Anjali Singh, Alice Looney, Grace Looney and Matthew Mooney who all represented Ireland in different age categories.
In the girl’s 08 event, it was Grace who made it through to the Main event third round stages with some good wins over KUTUZOVA (Estonia) and WONG (England). In the third round group she faced tough games against HOCHART (France) and MARTIN (Spain) where she orchestrated many excellent points but on this occasion could not progress to 4th round.
In the girl’s 07 event, it was Anjali and Alice who represented Ireland in this category and we saw Anjali progress to the third round groups with Alice making the second stage groups. Alice picked up a nice win against DUMITRU (Occitanie) whilst Anjia took wins against LESKENS (Holland). In the third round stages, Anjali played very well in both matches but was outclassed by the excellent MEI ROSU (Romania) and lost a close 4th setter against DAROVCOVA (Slovakia). Both girls showed excellent progression over the few days after playing many tough battles against girls playing in systems where they can train up to 20 hours per week!
In the Boy’s 07 categories we had Matthew Mooney representing Ireland and he made his way through to stage two of the boys with a win in the first group over O’Connor (Wales). In the second stage of the boys singles, he was in a group of 4 with some quality players, playing matches against VINOGRADOV (Russia), RAFFI (ILE DE FRANCE) and MIROIU (Romania). The highlight for Matthew was going to the 4th set with MIROIU with some brilliant rallies that come at the end of day 2.
Overall a massive learning curve for our young players but many positive signs shown to Irish coaches Gavin and Gervis. The future is bright for these young Ormeau stars who showed nothing but heart in each game they played!
