UCS tennis talents clinch national title

UCS have rounded off a successful calendar year of sport by winning the LTA Schools Youth title for Year 7&8 Boys during national finals weekend in Bolton.

A team made up of Ruben, Dash, Rocco and Strahinja overcame competition from King Edward’s School Birmingham, Millfield Prep and Hutchesons’ Grammar School to win the round-robin group in considerable style.

The UCS quartet beat King Edward’s 5-1 in their opening fixture on Saturday, before a 4-2 success against Millfield later in the day emphasised their championship credentials. These were rubber-stamped by Sunday’s 3-3 draw and tie-break victory over Scottish school Hutchesons’.

The team’s campaign began in the last academic year and therefore the squad, led by UCS teachers Oliver Bienias and Arran Peck, contained three pupils now in Year 9 – Ruben, Rocco and Strahinja – as well as current Year 8 student Dash.

The finals weekend’s individual stats showed Ruben in second place on the overall leaderboard and Dash third, both with five sets won out of six. Rocco and Strahinja also added key wins to the collective UCS effort. The quartet had dominated their regional qualifiers in mid-November.

Assistant Head (Co-Curricular), Sophie Bennett, said: “It is really exciting to see Dash, Rocco, Ruben and Straz crowned LTA Schools Youth Year 7 & 8 national champions. They played in Bolton and won the trophy yesterday [Sunday] afternoon, so congratulations to everyone involved in such a fantastic achievement.”

Remarkably, player Ruben had also won the English schools championships for table tennis with the UCS Under-13s back in April.