National service for two county veterans

Apr 14 2011 West Lothian Courier

BARRIE HILLS and Drew McLaren have followed Imogen Beck’s lead and earned a national call-up proving the talent in West Lothian Table Tennis Club — at both ends of the age spectrum.

Beck (Torphichen) was recently selected for the Scottish Secondary Schools team in the Six Nations Championships and will head for Shropshire in June while Hills (Avonbridge) and McLaren (Bathgate) have been called up for the Scottish veterans team in the over 70s event against England, Ireland, Wales, Jersey and Guernsey.

Elsewhere, there was a big weekend in the Scottish National Leagues as both the senior and junior teams completed their season.

The junior team — Robbie Fairley (Whitburn) and Kieran Boyle (Bathgate) — were particularly impressive and chalked up a third consecutive 6-0 victory, this time against Perth, to finish in second place.

Unfortunately, the senior team of Lewis Hills, Barrie Hills and Dariusz Szymczak lost 2-4 with wins from both the Hills to complete their fixtures mid table.

In the Edinburgh and Lothians League the A Team slumped to their fourth consecutive defeat in the Premier Division, this time a 1-9 reversal against a high flying North Merchiston outfit with Lewis Hills registering their only win.

In Division One the B Team recorded an excellent 8-2 win away to Edinburgh International with a team of John McCulloch, fellow veteran Barrie Hills and top junior Kieran Boyle.

McCulloch registered three comfortable wins while. Hills won two from three but dropped the doubles when combined with Boyle.

However, it was the performance of young Boyle which particularly caught the eye in winning all of his singles encounters for the first time. The B team continued its winning ways when accounting for Edinburgh University 10-0.

After a relatively poor start to the season the team of Andy MacDougall, Kevin Milne and Keith MacKay has now put together an unbeaten series of results.

In Division Two the D Team of Drew McLaren, Ian Wodecki and George Anderson had an away fixture against an unbeaten Penicuik team which has already won the title and narrowly lost 4-6 in what proved to be a tense affair. Although always playing catch up there were a couple of five set losses which, if won, could have reversed the eventual result.

Wodecki again led the way in winning two with his comrades sharing the other two.

Having just been promoted from the lower division this team has well and truly established itself in this division.

Whether Wodecki remains in the team rather than being promoted to a higher division is open to conjecture but with a personal average of 85 per cent there is little doubt that he can move up.

In the same division the E Team did not have a match last week and still have two tricky fixtures to fulfil. Earlier in the season there was a little concern about a string of poor results but the pool of Jim Stewart, John Swift, Martin Rumsey and Sam Stanton has gradually pulled away from the drop zone to sit mid table.

Currently sitting in the promotion play off position, the F Team needed a win to secure this spot but suffered a 4-6 away reversal to Blue Liners (a team of police officers) to arrest their promotion prospects for now.

Team captain Benny Flockhart again led the way with two wins, Stephen Gray succeeded in one but Paul Keddie had some difficulty in adapting to unconventional playing conditions. Flockhart and Gray won the doubles but it was not enough.

In the West Lothian League title favourites Winchburgh powered their way to the top of the table with a 7-1 thrashing of Dedridge.

Their team of Dariusz Scymczak, Kieran Boyle and Bill Weir were too strong in every department for Keith MacKay, Kevin Boyle and Davie Dall.

The final scoreline might have been a total whitewash but for the excellent partnership of MacKay and Dall in the doubles against strong favourites Szymczak and Weir.