Tanny Karimi and Sasha Squires recap the men’s regional championships for the Yorkshire and East Midlands region.
After an intense weekend in Leeds, we are here to give you an insight into Men’s Indoor Regionals in the Yorkshire and East Midlands division.
Despite some hesitancy on the predictions, the majority came out to be mostly accurate. However, Huddersfield seemed to be the outlier on our predictions, finishing 10 places below what was predicted.
Loughborough continued to dominate, taking first place and having two teams qualify for nationals. Their five teams meant that their chants were heard loudly across Leeds.
After their great performances at mixed, Sheffield and Leeds remained consistent, taking second and third place respectively. It will be exciting to see how they perform in women’s to see if they continue this hot streak.
Despite not qualifying for any national divisions in the 2019/2020 season, York played to expectations, taking the final qualifying position for Division 2 nationals.
After a strong performance at Mixed Regionals, Nottingham Trent looked set to gain another nationals spot, finishing fourth on the Saturday after winning every game. However, they just fell short of qualifying for Nationals. Hopefully they will see more luck at women’s regionals this weekend.
An intense showdown was seen between Nottingham 1 and Nottingham 2, with Nottingham 2 coming out stronger, seeding one spot above the first team. With the loss of Sam Gelling from the first team, Nottingham 2 were able to come away with the higher seed.
Leicester did a brilliant job of bouncing up and down the table. They started seeded third, finishing Saturday seeded 19th. After a nearly undefeated Sunday, they managed to push back up to an impressive 10th seed. The improvement of this team is highlighted in their rematch against Leeds Beckett, losing 7-3 on the Saturday and then winning 10-6 on the Sunday.
Leeds Beckett came in as the underdogs and they proceeded to go above and beyond to exceed expectations. Finishing an impressive 12th, this can be seen to be a win for them as they have not been seen playing at Men’s Regionals for a while.
Iron-manning is not the easiest of jobs yet Sheffield 3 managed to perform highly despite their team being mostly newer players. It will be exciting to see these players develop over the year and we hope to see them perform highly outdoors next season.
Huddersfield 1 were one of the big surprises of the weekend. We predicted them to finish eighth after their great performance in the 2019/2020 season. However, they fell short by a large margin and managed to finish 18th. Not only did they lose some of their key players such as Sam Folley and Dougie Braid (who played for Leeds Beckett), they iron-manned the entire tournament with one lady and four male freshers. Given the difficult circumstances, they should be extremely proud of their efforts and hopefully this is something that they can take away from the tournament.
There were some great performances across the weekend at Leeds. A massive congratulations to all the qualifying teams. It was really interesting to see how the table was partly defined by teams who had retained more experienced players and how well teams were able to develop their freshers in such a short period of time.