REPORT BY DAVE KITCHENS
Harry Kitchens went oh so close, finishing in third place, at the recent U17 Junior British Racketball Championships played last month up in Liverpool.
It was a group / monrad basis and the format was a one dayer with matches played out as best of 3 to 11.
Harry’s first match lasted the best part of an hour and after a nervous start in the first few points he settled down and traded point for point with his opponent, with 10/15/20 strokes a point. A couple or so loose errors though towards the end proved costly for Harry and he lost the first game to 7.
He had it all to do but his fitness was beginning to pay dividends as he was forcing the error out of his opponent who was looking fatigued as the second end progressed. It was still full of long and brutal rallies and Harry held his nerve to win the second to 9. One all. The third end started in much the same vein and Harry pushed on to open up a 5 point gap. He was pushing on still, but near to the finishing line played a couple or so very loose points to allow his opponent to level at 9 all. Very tense but after two great but very long points Harry held his nerve to close the game out to 9 to win his first match. Brutal.
He was then up against the eventual winner, but boy did he give him a great match. Again, most rallies were very long and brutal and although Harry went down 2-0 with the amazingly close game scores of 12 – 14 , 11 – 13, he had game points in both but when they came his opponent found an impossible to return nic and Harry just did not get the run of the ball on those occasions.
Very unlucky not to win the match. We all know that happens, and on another day it might have been different.
Harry was very disappointed with that but got himself mentally together again, which is proving to be one of his strengths these days, to play out to a 3rd place finish.