Yolanda King wins national title

Yolanda wins national title.

St Bede’s Senior School’s Yolanda King is the new U18 national Table Tennis champion. Yolanda won the Junior (under 18) Girls’ singles at the Junior and Cadet National Championships, held at the English Institute of Sport (EIS), Sheffield over the weekend of December 12th and 13th.

England ranked and seeded No 5, Yolanda had a tough singles draw, but she did not drop a game until the quarter-finals, where she faced the England No 2 and second seed, Emily Bates (Lincolnshire). Employing her brand of heavy spin serves and fierce two-wing topspin attack Yolanda started well, comfortably taking the first game and leading up to the middle of the second. However, following a point given by the umpires to Yolanda, Bates said that the ball had hit King’s shirt before she had forehand blocked it back to win the rally and that the point should therefore have been awarded to herself (Bates). Bates’s coach, former England men’s champion Denis Neale intervened on her behalf, but no-one else, including King, had seen the ball touching the shirt and Yolanda kept the point. Although she went on to win that game, Yolanda was upset by the incident, and her play went to pieces in the next two. Fortunately she regained her focus in the deciding game, to come out an 11-7, 11-5, 8-11, 3-11, 11-6 winner.

Yolanda then had a comfortable 11-5, 11-9, 11-9 semi-final victory over Vicky Smith (Devon), who had earlier done Yolanda a favour by knocking out the only top girl in England who she has never beaten, 4th seed Melissa Wright (Yorkshire).
Yolanda saved her best performance for the final, where she faced England No 1 Junior and No 3 senior Karina Le Fevre (Cleveland), a quick and elegant counter-hitter. The ascendancy swung from one player to another, but Yolanda applied constant topspin pressure to finish on top 13-11, 6-11, 11-5, 3-11, 11-6 to claim the crown. A decisive factor was King’s ability to topspin ‘loop’ Le Fevre’s drives.

Partnering Weald Club colleague Lewis Gray, 15, from Benenden, Yolanda had a fairly easy passage to the semi-finals of the mixed doubles. They then went down 9-11, 7-10, 10-12 to Danny Lowe (Derbyshire) and Mary Fuller (Yorkshire), in a match that was much closer than the scores suggested: they missed two or three relatively easy balls when leading in the first game, and Yolanda missed a ‘sitter’ when holding game point in the third. Had they reached the final they would have been favourites, and it was unfortunate Lowe and Fuller were forced to concede the final owing to Lowe being disciplined.