Four team pool

Venue: Madely High School, Newcastle Road, Crewe. CW3 9JJ

Round 2 of the top U15 teams in England. After Rd 1 Wirral are in 13th place in the overall standings but with a chance in this 2nd round competition to go up to 8th place.

Teams: Wirral, Newcastle Staffs, Hull Thunder. Urmston Grammar B dropped out leaving only three teams in the competition.

Wirral U15 team: Liv Stewart (capt), Natsui Yamamoto, Victoria Adesina , Sadie Capstick, Gabi Liu, Ella Benjamin

Results. 

Wirral vs Hull Thunder won 2-0, 25-14, 25-9

Wirral vs Newcastle Staffs A lost 0-2, 20-25, 14-25

Both Wiral and ‘Castle had beaten Hull easily so the winning position and possible promotion to the ‘Gold’ group (top eight U15 girls in the country) hung on the result of the final game and the competititon started to get interesting. We started well, Victoria had a good run of serves and covered well back court, Gabi was everywhere and very effective, and Ella hit more winners than anyone. There was some noise and atmosphere in the hall we fought well, ‘castle made mistakes... we led through the teens and, at 20-18 up looked favourites to win the first set but ‘castle clung on, our girls made some errors and the set was gone. After that disappointment we never got going in the 2nd set and went down 14-25. We still have round 3 to play and the chance to win the silver pool which would be a great achievement with our very young team.