Saints Success at SSS Individuals

Monday 2 March 2020

Last weekend, the annual Scottish Students Sport (SSS) Individual Tennis Champs were held at University of St Andrews and it proved to be a successful tournament for Saints players.

The event attracted the biggest entry so far with 39 Men and 22 Women in the singles draws. There were doubles draws of 15 Men’s pairs and 8 Women’s pairs.

The Men’s singles title was retained by Stirling’s Jed Alexander who played a very high level of tennis all weekend. In the final, he defeated Lee Wishart (Strathclyde) who, himself, is a 3 times singles champion.

The host club had 6 Women and 6 Men competing over the weekend and picked up 3 winners medals in Women’s singles, Women’s doubles and Men’s doubles.

Beth Laybourne made her way through to the final with solid performances and in the gold medal match, she was up against an in form Kirsty Robertson from Stirling. Both players were attacking the ball well and playing very positively and it was Beth who came out on top with a 6-2 6-1 straight sets win.

Beth then returned to the court with Simone Jensen against Edinburgh’s Vocly Boilevin and Emma Persson for the doubles final. The St Andrews duo survived a tough set to come through 7-5 with a great finish to the 1st set. They then went on to dominate the 2nd set with a 6-1 win to continue the previous Saints’ success at this tournament in the women’s events. An excellent end to the women’s doubles event in which other St Andrews pair Matilde Piras and Abbie Schleichkorn narrowly missed out on a place in the final when they lost to the Edinburgh pair in a match tie-break.

Ed, Shamael, Beth & Simone with their trophies

Last match of the weekend saw Saints doubles pairing of Ed Pomeroy & Shamael Chaudhry do battle with the holder from Stirling, Jed Alexander and Angus Osborne. Jed & Angus started off the better and had 4 game points on serve at 1 set up  and 4-3 up in the 2nd. Ed & Shamael played the pressure points brilliantly and to the delight of the entertained crowd, they pulled it back to 4-4. This swung the momentum in favour of the Saints pair, who took the set 7-5. In the deciding match tie-break, Ed & Shamael kept up their great form and took the win 10-6.

Other Saints players were Lily Saab, Eilidh Baird, Sam Stead, Fin Pearson, Finlay Brown, Joe Kelly, Gunnar Thorstenson. Thanks to all the players for providing great tennis throughout the weekend and to Rick Gardner for refereeing.

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