Fives Team Success

The Fives team have just enjoyed an extremely busy five days of back-to-back matches and tournaments. 

On Thursday, St.Olave’s hosted a six pair match against Eton College, who have an extremely strong Team. Our strongest pairs from the seniors, down to under 14 age took part. It was wonderful to have the Headteacher spectating and a couple of other staff too! We won the fixture with five match wins and just one loss. 

The next day,  seven senior-level pairs of Olavians travelled to Shrewsbury School to play against another one of the country’s strongest sporting bastions. The Shrewsbury Fives Team is full of talented county cricketers, but St.Olave’s again, won all-but one of the matches played to win 6-1. 

The Adult Northern Championships then took place over the weekend, also at Shrewsbury. The  touring group of St.Olave’s pupils benefited from competing at the highest level, against adults. The two Olavian Captains of Fives had a particularly successful time. Tanish partnered with Old Olavian, Morgan Pugh and won the Main Tournament plate. Meanwhile, Aadi partnered with Old Olavian, James Toop  reached the Semi Finals of the Main Championships where they lost in a close match against the first seeds. They had won a magnificent 5-set victory from two sets down, against  the fourth seeds in the quarter-finals to get there! It is extremely rare for players this young to be able to compete so well st this level!

Congratulations to Aadi, Tanish and all of the Touring Team for being such brilliant ambassadors for the school. 

The next day, it was time for the U13’s to take centre stage! 10 pairs competed in the national under 13s championships held at Harrow School. There were many terrific performances from the young Olavians.  Aksel Lutzow and Kenzo Okpemerho played outstandingly well to reach the Final, defeating pairs from Cranleigh, Belmont, Summerfields, Prestfelde, and Berkhamsted Prep, along the way. They were eventually defeated by the top Highgate pair in a thrilling final that demonstrated an amazingly high level of play for their age. Congratulations on reaching this National Final. 

Sritharush Sriram & Peter Ou are to be congratulated on winning the plate!