BUDMOUTH Table Tennis Club gave one of its finest shows in the regional finals of the English Schools' Table Tennis Association (ESTTA) Team championships.

The girls' under-16 team faced Willingdon Community School from Eastbourne, Holte School from Birmingham and Burlington Danes Academy from Hammersmith at Bournemouth.

After the first four games of the first match against Willingdon, the schools were level at 2-2 but the Budmouth girls then played with more confidence and wins by Jaimee Browne, Ella Stanton and Sophie Storey ensured a most encouraging 5-3 victory.

The second match against Holte began with a really good win by Rosa McKechnie to set off a stream of good performances ensuring an 8-0 whitewash.

The final match against Burlington Danes was a different proposition altogether as the London girls, who receive many hours of specialist coaching, were too strong and inflicted a 8-0 defeat on the Budmouth girls despite many of the legs being close.

With two wins, Budmouth finished second in the group but as only the winners qualify for the national finals, Budmouth can be extremely satisfied with being able to say they came in the top eight schools in the country.

On the Sunday, the boys' under-16 team played at Bristol in the same competition and hopes were high for the experienced team of Jamie Blair, Will Jolliffe, Ethan Gear and Tom Lydford.

Having qualified as South West champions they were up against The Bishop of Hereford Bluecoat School, Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys and Sacred Heart Catholic School from Southwark.

In the first match against Tunbridge, the Budmouth boys dropped only seven legs to ensure a 7-1 win although the final score did not really do justice to the losers who put up a very strong performance.

The second match against Hereford saw the Budmouth boys at their best as they overcame strong opposition 6-2 with Blair leading the way with two outstanding wins and Lydford also victorious in both his games.

The final match to decide the overall winners was then between the two undefeated teams of Budmouth and Sacred Heart.

Blair and Jolliffe got Budmouth off to the best possible start with good wins but when Lydford was beaten, despite playing well, the match entered a really crucial stage.

Both Gear and Blair found themselves two legs to one down in the next two matches but remarkably their resilience and fighting spirit produced two 3-2 victories to make the overall score 4-1.

Sacred Heart were then on the comeback trail and Jolliffe succumbed to Lydford’s conqueror, encouraged by the noisy London supporters.

Next up was Gear to try and get the Budmouth boys over the line against their number two player.

In a tense, nail-biting match, Gear produced a wonderful performance winning 11-9, 11-9, 12-10 to silence the crowd and ensure a trip to Hinkley for the national finals for the Budmouth team.

crowd and ensure a trip to Hinckley, near Leicester, on 25th March for the national finals.

This is a remarkable achievement and both the boys and the girls, along with Blair reaching the national schools individual finals in Wolverhampton at the end of April, can be very pleased with representing their college and their county so well.

The club has been running since Budmouth was formed in 1985 and has enjoyed much success over the years and introduced many boys and girls to the sport and club chairman Doc Hardisty hailed the performance.

He said: "The achievements have probably exceeded anything achieved in the last 32 years."