Congratulations to Alex and Reshad, who have had a successful weekend at the BE Cup Finals, held at the English Institute of Sport, Sheffield on the 21st-22nd of May 2016.

Club Captain, Alex Dukes attended his fourth consecutive BE Cup Finals, with his highest placed finish being second, in 2015. Whilst the 2016 Finals features the top ten BC1 athletes in the country, competing in the BC1 classification has never been easy. Especially with World Number 3, David Smith present, pushing for another trophy and making his preparations for Rio 2016.

Alex started off well and beat Tia (6-3) and Maxine (3-2) although unfortunately was unable to beat Dan (7-0) and England International, Jabe (4-0).  Winning two of his four games, Alex was close to qualifying for the knockout round of the competition but didn’t . Despite this, Alex had a strong competition and put in some good performances. He was pleased overall with how he played, but disappointed with the timing of his illness. Nonetheless, Alex will be back on court training hard for next seasons BE Cup Rounds competition, in Hatfield.

Reshad, also attending his fourth National level competition, had a great tournament. He approached the weekend with a positive mindset, aiming to perform and leave with a medal. Reshad managed to reach close to his optimum performance level and maintained a level of consistency throughout the tournament. This made him very hard to play against, and he went unbeaten through to the final, registering fantastic scores of 9-2 and 12-0 along the way.

In the Final, Reshad came up against Aran Guthrie, an experienced player who Reshad has not faced before. Some preparation prior to the match and development of his game plan resulted in Reshad controlling the game and winning 5-1. This represents the highest point of Reshad’s boccia career to date, which has included appearances at regionals, nationals and the GB Championships for the last three years.

After the competition, PACE Boccia Head Coach, Sunil Birdy said…

We are absolutely delighted. We came here with no medal stress. Just a hunger to perform as well as we could, and that’s exactly what we did!