Boccia talents shine at UK Challenger

The Boccia UK Challenger event in Gloucester saw Pathway players from across the home nations come together this weekend with World Class Performance athletes.

It was the sixth event in the Challenger series, hosted by Boccia UK, which has been designed to provide more competitive opportunities across the UK.

Northern Ireland’s Claire Taggart was certainly on good form, beating her team-mates David Smith OBE and Will Hipwell in a mixed event of BC1 and BC2 players.

The world number three is building towards a series of World Cups and then the World Championships in Brazil in December:

“I’m delighted to win. It’s always good to see the development of home nation athletes since the last time we met up with them too. Playing with and against David is always a challenge as we have a similar style of jack placements and it’s always a battle as to who will come out on top.”

BC1/2 winners

In the BC3 category, England’s Matt Berry took top honours with a convincing 8-0 victory over Raf Young. In the semi-finals, Young eliminated Scott McCowan, who finished fourth at the Tokyo Paralympics, beating him 4-2. Edinburgh’s Patrick Wilson – who competed at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games – finished third.

BC3 winners

And it was Penny Froude who finished BC4 Champion, winning all four of her matches and earning the coaches’ award from Claire Morrison.

Penny receives Claire Morrison’s coaching award

Claire said:

“I gave my coaches’ award to Penny because she has really grown in confidence in recent months – on and off the court. She did a really good job of bringing that confidence into her matches this weekend.”

Meanwhile, Glynn Tromans gave his coaches’ award to Cecilia Turk:

“Ce won three of her four BC3 games and won the battle of the female players, beating Sally Kidson on tiebreak and Robyn 3-1 in two very good matches.”