Soraya Rahmani-Walentynska will aim to ‘upgrade’ her Under-15 title from last season to Under-19 gold this time around as the National Series reaches a climax this weekend.
The London Academy player (pictured above) is the best player in Division 1 of the Junior section, where she faces a challenge from five other top English players in the Junior bracket, plus Ireland’s Anjali Singh and Scotland’s Maja Wojcicka.
Based on seeding, her closest challenger will be Eva Eccles from Norfolk, but the round-robin nature of the competition means every player has the chance to make a name for themselves.
In the corresponding boys category, Issac Kingham is the top seed, with Leo Nguyen next in the rankings and Jake Davidson – last year’s U15 champion – third.
Last year’s Under-13 champions, Amber Lemmon and Rishaan Sawant, both have a chance to go one step further and win the U15 honors, although neither is a top seed.
Among the girls, Lemmon is in third place, behind top seed Hannah Saunders and second-place Alyssa Nguyen. Scotland’s Kiishi Adekola is the only non-English player in the fray.
The U15 boys field is led by Ryan Holland, ahead of Oscar Nikolli and Ryan Goodier, with Sawant in fifth place.
Top spot in the Under-13 Girls is Bethany Yang, ahead of Isabella Xiao Xu and Phoebe O’Brien, while the corresponding top division for boys is led by Malek Shamakh, Saisuriya Prasanna Kumar and Li Hao Chen.
The National Series regularly provides high-quality competitive opportunities for the top cohort in each youth age group – Under-13, Cadet (U15) and Junior (U19), with multiple divisions of up to eight players in each age/gender category, played in a round-robin format.
The Under-13s and Under-19 competitions will take place at Grantham College and the Under-15s at Nottingham TTC, with the girls divisions playing on Saturday and the boys on Sunday.
A total of fifteen division winners will be crowned, including the six champions.
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