The England squad took home a whopping 10 gold medals at the recent 2025 Home Nations Championships, with a total of 22 podium finishes for the England squad heading into UCD Dublin, Ireland, this weekend.
The event started with the team events, where England achieved their first success of the weekend, winning every junior team event to play for. This included gold in the Cadet Boys (Sinan Surensoy & Ryan Goodier). While Scotland and England settled for a 2-2 draw, it was England Girls (Serene Rahmani-Walentynska & Alyssa Nguyen) who took back the title. Additionally, the Junior Boys (Pablo Ramirez-Rioja & Zac Greenhough) and Junior Girls Team events (Eva Eccles & Soraya Rahmani-Walentynska) both finished in first place and remained undefeated throughout.
It was the home crowd favorites who took the women’s team title as Ireland’s Mia O’Rahilly Egan and Sabina Devereux tied for first place, leaving Ella Pashley and Rachael Iles in second place to take the silver medal despite three draws. In the men’s team competition, England (Jakub Piwowar & Isaac Kingham) had to settle for the bronze medal due to countback. England actually beat silver medalists Ireland 3-1, but when Ireland defeated champions Scotland 3-1 it meant three teams were all level on 18 points, leading to Scotland’s Martin Johnson and Colin Dalgleish taking the gold medal.
In doubles, England took 4 out of 6 possible gold medals, while the Cadet girls and Junior boys took silver. Piwowar and Kingham combined as top seeds, starting in the semi-final, took gold over Johnson & Dalgleish, the team event champions. Ramirez-Rioja and Greenhough were top seeds, but lost to Gavin Yuan and Dan Tibbets in the finals, resulting in a second-place finish. Rahmani-Walentynska and Nguyen had to settle for a silver loss against Scotland’s Kiishi Adekola and Alexandra Hart.
It was an all-England final in the men’s singles as Isaac Kingham took on Jakub Piwowar and it was the current England junior national champion who took the title, capping off a fantastic few weeks for the young man from Torbay who recently made his WTT Star Contender debut in London. In the Women’s Singles, Ella Pashley was the only Englishwoman to finish on the podium and had to settle for bronze as silver went to Mia O’Rahilly Egan and yet another WTT Star Contender London debutant took first place, while Jersey’s Hannah Silcock took the gold.
Soraya Rahmani-Walentynska was crowned British Champion in the Junior Girls category, after initially being named in the Cadet Girls Squad, with the withdrawal of Sienna Jetha from the Women’s squad, Rachael Iles moved up to the Senior squad and Soraya into the Junior Girls age group, with her younger sister taking her place in the Cadet Girls Squad. A remarkable achievement for Soraya, as she was not supposed to play in this category. She defeated Ireland’s Grace Looney in the final. In the Junior Boys category, the gold medal went to Scot Gavin Yuan, who defeated Pablo Ramirez-Rioja in the final. There was also a podium finish for Ormesby’s Zac Greenhough, who finished in third place and earned a bronze medal.
There were no gold medals in the Cadet Singles events, but there were 4 positive results, with every player finishing on the podium and taking a medal. In the Cadet Boys’ singles, it was Sinan Surensoy who reached the final but could not beat the champion, Joe Mulhern of Scotland. Ryan Goodier reached the semi-finals and took a bronze medal, adding the team event gold. A similar story at the Cadet Girls event, when England’s Alyssa Nguyen took the silver medal and was defeated in the final by Scotland’s Kiishi Adekola, while Serene Rahmani-Walentynska earned a bronze medal.
A fantastic event for the England squad overall, with a total of 10 gold medals, 7 silver medals and 5 bronze medals, a great achievement for the young squad. Many thanks to Antony Constantinou, Olly Tyndall, Evie Collier and Ben Barlow who were on duty to support and coach the England squad.
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