For many years London Academy has hosted the largest Cadet British Club Leagues tournament in the country. However, because of the increasingly crowded event calendar and the difficulties involved in delivering a 4 week league we decided to drop out of the competition for this season.
That said, we still think the idea of a Cadet team competition is valuable, so we decided to create our own, limited version of the Cadet League. A team competition based on the CBCL, but with self contained competition days, and a shorter format.
Three clubs sent teams along to the event: four from Urban, three from Lowlands and two from Kingfisher. With three home teams that gave us one boys Division and two mixed.
Mixed Division 1
The Top Division in the Mixed section was won convincingly by Kingfisher A. Rabani Ahluwalia, Kaavya Pathak, and Swara Mahabhashyam, moved through the competition for the loss of only two matches.
London Academy A took the Silver with a convincing win 5-1 over Urban 1 in their final match. Urban 1 had to settle for the Bronze medals.
Boys Division 1
Kingfisher completed a sweep of the top divisions when their boys team: Noah Clarke, Charlie Zeng, and Ayansh Pahwa, defeated a determined Urban 4: Ruben Finkelstein, Yingrui Jiang, and Bingyao Zhou (stepping in for James Katz), to take the Gold.
Despite being level going into the final round, Urban's loss of their second ranked player meant that they would inevitably struggle to contain their Berkshire opponents. In the end they lost 5-1 with a single victory for Ruben Finklestein.
Urban's earlier victory over Lowlands 1 meant that the took the Silver and Lowlands had to settle for Bronze.
Mixed Division 2
The final division also went down to the last round with Urban 2: Alexix Rylik, Bingce Zhou, and Julia Urban, taking the title with a 5-1 victory over Lowlands 3: Ayush Thakker, Nikhil Shah, and Aarav Devani.
London Academy took the Bronze in their last match. 2 Wins for Sara Maslina, meant that Skye Fernandez and Jessy Cami had to match Urban 3's set ratio in the last two matches. Skye lost a hard fought 5 setter 12-10 in the final set to Mark Levitin, but Jessy won the final match of the day against Bella Levitin, also in 5 sets, to squeeze through.
We would like to thank the three clubs: Kingfisher, Urban, and Lowlands who showed a lot of faith in our ability to deliver an amended Cadet Team tournament. There will be two more competitions this season, on January 17th, and March 27th 2027.
The entry forms for these competitions will go online in the coming weeks.
We have room for up to 24 teams and we are also hoping to add another 8 mini-cadet entries. So if any other clubs wish to take part they are perfectly welcome.