On Saturday 13th April, two teams from Swindon’s Padel4All attended the national IPadel finals at Rocket Padel in Bristol. The IPadel competition is held twice and year and has two tiers – The Premier Tier for top level teams that can include players up to those competing both nationally and internationally and the Club Tier for local club level players.
Firstly, congratulations to the Padel4All ladies team who qualified for the premier competition after a tough series of qualification matches against teams from across the south west and similarly congratulations to the Padel4All men’s second team who qualified for the club finals coming through a tough group.
The Padel4All men’s second team had a fantastic day. After 3 successive wins; two of which were on nail biting deciding championship tiebreaks, the team of Ryan Williams, Lucca Durazzo, Matt Fretwell and Greg Phillips lost a very tight final to Chicester. A wonderful achievement for the team who competed valiantly throughout.
Unfortunately for our ladies team, after coming runners up of the premier compeition last time around, they were drawn against the winners of the past three iterations; Chelsea Harbour Club led by GB number 1 Tia Norton, in the first round. The team of Pati De Lucas, Sarah Boyce, Sylvie Darrieumerlou and Alicia Hazzard fought hard but unfortunately fell to the eventual champions. Chelsea proved to be far too strong for all the teams on the day. The ladies team did however recover to beat David Lloyd Raynes Park in their consolation match.
All members of both the mens and ladies teams hail from Wiltshire and continue to show how the standard of padel across the county is on the rise!
Alicia Hazzard (Wiltshire Padel Representative)
