Marsh National Schools' Championships 2015: New Names to the Fore

March 2015: The first competitions of the 2015 Marsh National Schools' Championships have taken place at Eton in the last few days, with new names on both trophies.

Shrewsbury have just started taking girls all the way through the school this year and found success at the first attempt in the girls Under 15 tournament at Eton on Sunday. Nina Lange and Tilly Reynolds have already made a good impression in other recent tournaments and made it through comfortably to the final, where they took on the Ipswich pair of Ellie Morgan and Eloise Carter, who had also looked a class above the other pairs in the competition. The final was a very good game, with all four players performing well, but the extra power and strong cutting of the Shrewsbury pair - especially Lange - made the difference and carried them to victory. It is good to see this tournament beginning to expand, with four schools represented this year - Shrewsbury, Ipswich, Highgate and Berkhamsted.

A tournament that definitely doesn't need to grow any more is the boys Under 12 event, which once again attracted an astonishing 96 pairs to Eton on Monday. This tournament has been the exclusive preserve of Highgate School for a long time, with the trophy won by Cholmeleian pairs every year since 1993. This year, the top Highgate pair were beaten in the semi-finals by a very good Sunningdale pair, who then came up against old prep school rivals Summer Fields in the final. The first game was very close, with Mark Spiridonov and Edward Bingham of Summer Fields just edging it 14-12. Once in front, the Oxford pair never looked back and won the second game 12-1 to claim a first ever national schools' title for Summer Fields, much to the delight of coaching team Andy Bishop and James Woodcock.