Cippenham unbeaten in first weekend

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Cippenham’s team in the Women’s British League completed the first half of the season unbeaten with three wins and two draws from their five matches. The matches were staged in Wolverhampton and Cippenham emerged placed second in Division 5, equal on points with leaders Wensum.

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In a good all-round team performance, Julie Dean and Mary Heffernan both won six of their eight matches, Denise Weller won four out of six and Sue Hayes won half of her eight encounters.

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Cippenham got the weekend off to a great start with a 4-2 victory over Sutton at Hone. Julie beat Heidi Smith and then Sue extended Cippenham’s lead with a tight five-game thriller with former national number one veteran Helen Shields. Mary then gave Cippenham a 3-0 lead with a dominating display against Carol Homewood. Julie lost to Shields before Mary completed her brace against Smith and, with it, secured the Slough-based club the maximum number of league points. Sue lost the last set to Homewood but by then it hardly mattered.

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Another 4-2 victory followed, this time against Fastbats. Denise replaced Julie in the Cippenham team and made her mark immediately winning 3-0 against Ellen Adams to equalise Sue's loss to Yin Wing Choy. Denise also lost to Choy but apart from that it was all Cippenham with Mary beating both Ulricha Zhang and Adams while Sue also beat Zhang.

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Denise, Julie and Mary teamed up for the late Saturday match against Halton 4 and romped home 6-0. Only Mary suffered some resistance as she had to come back from 2-1 down to defeat Milly Hanrahan.

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Sunday morning saw the clash between the division’s top two teams and the result was a creditable 3-3 draw. Each of the Cippenham players won one match each, Denise and Sue both defeating Saskia Key while Julie got the better of Isabelle Lacorte.

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The weekend finished with another 3-3 draw, this time against Stantek. Julie was Cippenham’s star player in this match with wins against Kim Selfe and Melanie Boulton, both 3-0. Sue also beat Slack but Mary lost her unbeaten record losing to both Slack and Selfe.