Loveridge's golden rally to second title

ALICE LOVERIDGE overcame terrible nerves to retain her British Schools' title on her home patch yesterday. Having stepped up an age-group to contest and win a team bronze at under-16 level on Saturday, the starlet dropped back into the under-14 category for the singles championship and swept aside the opposition drawn from around the UK.

'I've never seen her so nervous,' said Becks O'Keefe, the 12-year-old's coach, moments after she had defeated England's Martha Travis 11-5, 9-11, 11-8, 11-4.

'She puts herself under tremendous pressure,' added O'Keefe.

'But she played extremely well.

'She needed to step up to the table and be strong on both wings and that's what she did.'

Loveridge, who this week flies out to contest her first Island Games, said she had recent and past experience of playing Travis, as she explained.

Loveridge had taken out another English player, Natalie Slayter, in straight sets in the semi-finals having already shone in the under-16s team event for which she partnered Paula Le Ber and individually lost only one match, against England's Hannah Hicks.

Guernsey finished the weekend with four medals: two team and two individual.

Ollie Loveridge reached the semis of the under-14 boys' singles to guarantee himself a bronze, but after taking the first set off England's Daniel Lowe went down in five.

Langlois showed tremendous character in forcing a fifth after surviving three match points in the fourth and he saved another four when 10-5 down in the fifth.

A timeout unsettled Lowe to the extent that Langlois hit back to 9-9 before Lowe's coach called his own timeout and the very next point the English lad won the vital 11th point.

Guernsey's other medal came courtesy of the under-18 duo of Scott Romeril and Garry Dodd and the former also made it to the quarter-finals of the singles only to lose to Scot Craig Howieson.