Over the weekend of the 18th and 19th June, England squad athletes; Jabe Peake, Caroline Robinson, James Clowes, Matt Berry, Lee Maddison and Penny Froude were joined by fellow Boccia England members Jason Rolph, Rachel Ross, Reshad Saraj, Raf Young, Sally Kidson, Cecilia Turk and Lee Croker to battle out against athletes from Northern Ireland and Scotland as well as Boccia UK's World Class Programme athletes at the University of Gloucester.

For James, Rachel, Raf, Sally, Cecilia and Lee C, this was their first appearance at a UK challenger this season.

It was a very high standard of competition and all of the English athletes produced some excellent performances. In the BC3 competition, Matt Berry claimed the gold medal and Raf Young the silver, beating world class programme athletes Scott McCowan and Patrick Wilson in their respective semi-finals. Penny Froude went undefeated throughout the competition and picked up the gold medal in the BC4 classification. In the BC1/2 competition David Smith narrowly missed out on the gold medal, being beaten by Claire Taggart in the final and Will Hipwell pipped James Clowes to the bronze medal.

Boccia UK Coaches, Claire Morrison and Glynn Tromans, also presented special coach awards at the conclusion of the competition. Claire granted her award to Penny Froude highlighting her growth and development, not only through this competition, but the whole challenger series. Glynn shared how he could have awarded his award to a number of athletes including Raf Young after he beat two of the World Class programme athletes on his way to the final, but it deservedly went to Cecilia Turk for her performance throughout the weekend winning 3 of her 4 games and coming out top of the female BC3s.

 

This competition was organised by our Competition Manager, Rachael Crack and was supported by our dedicated team of volunteer officials across England.

You can view the full results here.