Headline – “Victory is Sweet for William”
Island games-bound William Dalugdugan (Ramsey) secured his best victory to date as he prevailed in the annual Malcolm Looker Junior Top 12 tournament at the NSC last Sunday. With the cream of the Island’s excellent crop of juniors competing, it was an exciting and high-quality tournament with no fewer than half the field consisting of established Division One league players.
Dalugdugan secured the title with a roller-coaster 5 set final win over Travellers’ William Shooter in which he raced into a 2-set lead, before Shooter fought back convincingly to level the tie. With the momentum favouring Shooter he took a narrow lead in the final set and turned round 5-4 ahead before Dalugdugan recovered to snatch the title 11-8. A tremendous finale to an excellent and highly competitive tournament.
Earlier Shooter had topped Group A, unbeaten with 5 wins including an outstanding 11-8 fifth set victory over top seed and clubmate Mia Heike in his final group match. Heike qualified for the semi-finals as Group A runner-up having comfortably won all her other matches in straight sets.
Dalugdugan emerged as Group B winner after a titanic battle with Ryan Holland (Copy Shop) which also finished 11-8 in the fifth. Like Heike, Holland also didn’t drop a set in his other 4 group matches and progressed to the semi-finals.
Both Shooter and Dalugdugan then took their respective cross-over semi-finals 3-1, leaving Heike to edge out Holland for third place before Dalugdugan closed the tournament in fine style.
Further down the field, Dan Levine of Copy Shop produced an excellent performance to finish fifth, after earlier shocking Dalugdugan with a five-set defeat in his third group match. Levine’s 3-1 defeat of Ronan Thompson meant that the Peel man placed sixth, followed by the Ramsey pairing of Wilma Dalugdugan and Francesca Lord.
Peel ‘s Ale Ramirez finished well, narrowly edging out newcomer Luke Hegley (Junior Development) for 9th place in another 5-set thriller, to gain revenge for his earlier defeat in the group stages. Caitlin Henery (Ramsey) showed up well in her first tournament and finished 11th, only losing out to Ramirez 13-11 in the fifth set. Meanwhile the unlucky Amit Lanin (Arbory) completed the field after injury caused him to pull out midway through the group stage.
Overall this was an excellent tournament in which every player did themselves credit, demonstrating the strength in depth of junior table tennis on the Island and providing great encouragement for the future.
Tim Baker
