Good start to the year

I started the year well winning gold medals at the North West Open, Midlands Open, Goole Championships and the Southern area open. I have won all 14 of my fights in this country this year. I have also picked up maximum ranking points and am ranked No1. in England at the moment.
The next two months I have a lot of very hard competitions abroard. Next week I am in Lyon, France then I have Rouen, France, Duisberg, Germany and finish April with my first trip to Russia. In May I compete in Germany and The Netherlands. I hope to bring home a few medals from some of these tough competitions.

My Season So Far !

Since returning form the European championships , a tournament held annually which stages the best basketball prospects in Europe, I have been training daily to ensure the chance to represent England this year in Israel !

At Christmas I played for England in Manchester against international teams such as, Germany, Scotland, Romania and also to of the top English club teams ( reading and Manchester). We played very well in this tournament and remained undefeated until the final, when unfortunately we were beaten by a better drilled German squad.

I am now preparing to for a tournament in France with England, last year the team won so we will go out there with intentions to do the same.

I am training twice daily to work on my skills and develop new ones , and the contributions of the Derbyshire talented athlete fund helps a great deal.

First Competition of the Year

I have just completed my first competition of the year. It was an Under 21 Competition at Rye Golf Club. It was very windy and sometimes foggy!! There were 50 competitors and I came in second place so I was very pleased with my performance. My world ranking points increased by 700 points which is excellent. I am off to Spain now for a week's coaching before my next competition in April.

I've had a great experience this last year with basketball. After captaining the England U18 team at last year's Euro B Championships and finishing 4th, I moved out to Oklahoma, United States to attend Oral Roberts University.

Originally I had decided, with the coaching staff, to red-shirt my freshman year which basically means that I practice with the team all year but sit out the games (basically a developmental year) so that I wasn't wasting a year of eligibility with limited playing time. However, due to a number of injuries at my position I was called up mid-season to help the team out. It has been a great experience playing NCAA Division 1 basketball and the team finished with a 20-13 record, finishing 3rd in our conference and losing to 2nd place in the conference tournament semi-finals. We beat some very good teams including Stanford, Missouri and New Mexico (ranked number 8 in the nation at one point). I know that my game has improved alot this year and that I have learned some very valuable lessons on and off the court. Despite being a walk-on this year my head coach showed great interest in my development and gave me the opportunity to play in some big games and the coaches were very happy with my contributions on the year.

Although the season is now over, off-season workouts are starting soon and I will be focussing on preparing myself to play in this summer's European Championships with the GB U20s squad.

Mikey Manghum

A little late but...

I gained good results in both the Junior and Senior East Midlands Regional Champs on the 14th March - finishing 1st in the Juniors and 3rd in the Seniors. Both competitions are not on the same scale as the season's nationals/internationals, but still hold significant prestige.

Firstly, the Junior competition: I started off fencing in one poule of 7 fencers, winning 5/6 fights. After just over two hours on the piste the poule rounds were finally complete. Although losing a fight, I conceded a low number of hits - giving myself a 1st place seeding. This would make the following round of direct elimination (DE) a lot easier. With each direct elimination fight lasting 9 minutes and to 15 hits, I won my first against a difficult left-hander 15:9. Later DE fights saw a few good fencers and contenders for the final knocked out. In the final itself I came up against yet another left-hander. Controlling the fights tempo I managed to gain a surprisingly quick 15:4 victory.

Then there was the Seniors...

As with the Juniors, this comp. started with a poule of 7 fencers. Fencing well, I secured 6/6 wins while conceding a low number of hit - increasing my ranking 'indicator'. A good start placed me in 1st seed again. My first DE fight saw me fence someone from my poule. Although an tricky fencer, favouring aggressive running attacks, I managed to secure a comfortable victory. The second DE round proved a challenge. My opponent matched me hit for hit in the first fencing period (first 3 min. out of 9) using a strong parry and angulated riposte. By the second period I had learnt to keep my distance and timing, eventually leading to a 15:11 victory - the narrowest yet.

I then had my semi-final fight. Fencing last years champion I knew that the fight would be close. As an older, taller and more experienced opponent, I had difficulty closing distance to hit on my attacks at first. I started the second period 5-3 down and, changing my timing, pulled back an equalising 8-8 by the end of the 2nd period. The third period remained close, hit-for-hit, and by the 9th minute the score was 12:12. When the 9 minutes ends on a draw, both fencers continue fencing for a minute. With the flip of a coin, one fencer is given priority and will win if no hits are scored. Unluckily, my opponent got priority, pressuring me to attack. With 20 seconds left, I needed to close distance - just conceding a hit in the attempt.

While not quite a Senior 1st place, both events provided me with further practice and knowledge to take with me into the rest of the national Senior and Junior (under 20's) season.

update

I have been training really hard these past few months mainly because I have moved home clubs to City of Sheffield Swim Squad (COSSS) I have found this a very positive move for me . Iam in the middle of a break in competition at the moment but on the 21st of March I am swimming 4 relays for COSSS in the Yorkshire County Championships to be held at my home pool Ponds Forge. Also the following weekend I'm swimming at City of Sheffield Premier Open meet. I am hoping to gain another National Qualifying Time in the 800m Freestyle at this event I already have 2 NQT's in the 1500m free and 400IM and am hoping to better my times in these before the National Championship event in August at Ponds Forge.

Under 25 international series

hi my name is ashley clipston and this year i went to ireland to represent england in the under 25 junior international series.

In january the international series was being play in ballymoney in ireland. All the 4 countries manage to arrive safely even with the bad weather conditions.

The format for the games is 4 rinks of 4 players which play 21 ends in each game.
With England winning the series last year in scotland there was more pressure on us to try and retain the title.

The first game was against wales which england won 2 rinks and lost 2 rinks but england managed to score more shots seeing the total england 92,wales 67.

In the other game between Scotland and irleand,scotland won with 109-73 total.

Englands next game was against the hosts ireland with england spirits high manged to beat the hosts with and impressive 100-67 total.

Scotland and wales was a very close game which wales come out victorios with a 83-82 shot win.

England had scotland in the last game with england being the only team to win the first 2 games meant all we needed to do was to beat scotland to retain the title.
The games was very close and with 18 ends played out of the 21 there was only 6 shots the difference. A pulsating game ended with England winning by 13 shots and Jamie Chestney’s rink winning by a magnificent 32 shots which is the rink i was on.

Overall i was very pleased with my achievements over the weekend and will hopefully be selected again next year to represent my country again.