Mixing It Up: Scoones & Young Take The Win

Mixing It Up: Scoones & Young Take The Win

14/04/25: Emily Scoones & Hugo Young won the 2025 Mixed Tournament in association with Advanta Wealth at Eton yesterday, defeating defending champions Karen Hird & Riki Houlden in the final.

A strong entry of 22 pairs - including many of the top players in the country as well as a wide-ranging mix of age and experience - took part in what is always one of the most enjoyable tournament in the Fives calendar, back at Eton for the first time in a couple of years.

The morning group stages allowed everyone to work themselves into the competition and find their level for the afternoon knockouts as well as providing some valuable coaching opportunities for some of the less experienced pairs, notably four Newbury pairs with members of the Newbury club partnering a group of Year 11 girls who've only been playing for a few weeks, but who quickly settled in, improving at a rate of knots right from the start.

The group stages eventually divided the field into three sections - the first and second place finishers heading into the quarter-finals, the third and fourth placed pairs moving into Plate A and the fifth and sixth placed pairs heading for Plate B. It wasn't all straightforward - an unfortunate ankle injury to Noah Caplin scuppered his and Jessye Tu's chances early on and led to some minor alterations to the draw and there were a couple of tight battles to decide the placings, most notably in Group C where Salopians Sophia Breese & Luke Lloyd-Jones came from 9-11 down to beat Oxford's Freya Butler & Edwin Gosnell 12-11 and claim a place in the quarter-finals.

Sophia & Luke weren't able to overly trouble the defending champions as the tournament moved on to the knockout stages and Fred Prickett and another Salopian in Morgan Butler - the main beneficiaries of the Caplin injury - also met their match in the form of the new pairing of two former champions in Emily Scoones & Hugo Young. The Ipswich pairing of Charlotta Cooley & Isaac Weaver looked in good fettle as they cruised past the potentially tough challenge of Elana Garfield-Osen & Alex Abrahams, while in the other quarter-final, the Salopian pairing of Lizzie Ware & Sam Welti put in an excellent performance to beat Ashley Lumbard & Aroop Bhattacharya 15-9.

The four losing quarter-finalists played a further plate, which produced four excellent and close matches, ending in a 15-14 win for 5th place by Ashley & Aroop over Elana & Alex.

The semi-finals reverted to best of three games, but both produced straight games wins for the top two seeds, although in both cases the second games were much closer than the first and Charlotta & Isaac in particular pushed Emily & Hugo pretty hard. Nevertheless the final was the one most people would have predicted at the start of the day, the Kinnaird wining pair of Riki & Hugo up against each other alongside familiar opponents Karen & Emily, who were facing each other in the final of this competition for the fourth year in a row.

The crowd had rather dwindled by the time the final got underway, with most of the other matches already completed, which was a shame as it very much lived up to the standards of recent mixed finals, proving to be a fascinating match up. The first game was all about Emily & Hugo, who played with intensity, aggression and precision to win 12-8. Karen & Riki were both carrying niggles and not quite firing on all cylinders, but their tactical awareness and court sense were very much still there and they were able to stay in touch on the set piece in game two, which was one of those classic long, tight, mixed games that inch forward a point at a time with neither pair ever able to break free of the other. It could have gone either way, but it was Karen & Riki - in a gutsy and well-crafted display - who edged it, helped by a couple of Hugo's otherwise formidable cuts flying out of court at key points. Karen's leg injury was clerly restricting her movement, however, and when Emily & Hugo came out firing again at the start of the third game, the defending champions had no answer. They quickly got out to a convincing lead and were always in control from thereon in, clinching the third game comfortably to claim their second mixed title each and their first as a pair.

Elsewhere, the third and fourth placed pairs from the group stage had battled it out for the Plate A "Dossi Dish". There was an unusual Doctor Who style regeneration as the morning pairing of Rachel Wood & Matt Chinery gradually but seamlessly morphed into Jessye Tu & Jamie Levinson during the course of the competition, which was as fiercely contested as always. Last two standing were the two Oxford University pairs as Freya & Edwin looked to put their morning disappointment behind them against Lorenza Valensise & Joel Robb, with both the silverware and internal club bragging rights at stake. Freya & Edwin got off to the better start with a 12-4 win in the first game but the two Cholmeleians fought back in game two to win 12-10 and take it into a decider, which went almost all the way, Freya & Edwin finally coming through to win 12-10.

Plate B was a five pair round robin, the four Newbury pairs joined by Zoe & James Wheale. This was a delightful competition, which attracted the biggest crowds of the day. No pair was able to win all of their matches and no pair lost all of theirs; there was another seamless substitution as Will Seath morphed into Grace Day haflway through and the winner was in doubt right up to the end of the final game. The four novice Newbury girls were able to demonstrate just how much they had improved during the course of the day with some fantastic cutting, returning and rally play matched by exactly the right blend of competitive yet friendly spirit that encapsulates what Fives is all about. In the end, it was Zoe & James who came out on top by virtue of their head to head win against Eloise Babb & Poom Hall with Sara Griffin and Will & Grace (not the sitcom) just missing out in third. We hope to see a lot more of all of them in the future.

Our thanks go to Eton for hosting the competition, to Advanta Wealth for their sponsorship and to everyone who came along to play and made it such an enjoyable day.

Quarter-Finals

K.Hird & R.Houlden beat S.Breese & L.Lloyd-Jones 15-4

L.Ware & S.Welti beat A.Lumbard & Ar.Bhattacharya 15-9

C.Cooley & I.Weaver beat E.Garfield-Osen & A.Abrahams 15-6

E.Scoones & H.Young beat M.Butler & F.Prickett 15-2

Semi-Finals

K.Hird & R.Houlden beat L.Ware & S.Welti 2-0 (12-3, 12-8)

E.Scoones & H.Young beat C.Cooley & I.Weaver 2-0 (12-4, 12-9)

Final

E.Scoones & H.Young beat K.Hird & R.Houlden 2-1 (12-8, 13-15, 12-4)

Quarter-Finalists Plate

Semi-Finals