England brought home five medals from the European School Games – including Girls’ Team gold.

The Boys’ Team won silver, while there were singles silvers for Prayrit Ahluwalia and Catherine Lv and bronze for Eva Eccles.

Lv, Eccles and team-mate Sienna Jetha all reached the semi-finals of the Girls’ Singles, with Eccles in particular battling through two 3-2 results against Elif Hocaoglu of Turkiye and Julia Schweigert of Croatia.

Her opponent in the semi-finals was Duru Sendogan of Turkiye, who had earlier knocked out Mia Lakhani in the last 16.

In the other half of the draw, Jetha and Lv advanced to meet each other in the semi-finals and Lv won it in five, with four of the games going to deuce. Sendogan took the title with a 3-1 victory over Lv.

Eccles won 3-1 against Jetha in the third-place play-off, while Lakhani won all three of her matches in the positional play-offs for ninth to 16th, meaning all the English girls finished in the top nine out of 21.

In the Boys’ Singles, Berk Oztoprak of Turkiye proved the outstanding player and won the gold medal with a 3-0 win over Ahluwalia in the final. Ahluwalia’s run to the final say him beat players from Moldova, Turkiye, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Max Radiven had the misfortune to be drawn against Oztoprak in the second round and lost 3-0, while Angad Saggu went out in the first round to Mustafa Nebhan of Turkiye. Janak Shah reached the quarter-finals, losing out to Ante Colak of Croatia.

Shah won the play-off for seventh and eighth positions against Bulgaria’s Ovaylo Karausev, while Radiven won three play-off matches to end up in ninth place. Saggu was 17th, with 26 boys having competed.

In the team events, both the boys’ and girls’ teams won their groups – the girls beating Croatia 4-0 and Moldova 4-3 and the boys winning 4-0 against both Moldova and Bulgaria.

Both finals saw England take on Turkiye and it ended with one victory apiece.

In the Girls’ Team final, Jetha put England 1-0 up with a 3-1 (8-11, 11-7, 11-8, 11-7) win over Elizan Basar and Eccles then reversed the result of her match against Sendogan, winning 3-1 (11-8, 11-2, 7-11, 11-8).

Lv’s 3-0 (5, 4, 10) win over Hocaoglu put England 3-0 up, and a 3-2 (11-3, 8-11, 11-9, 6-11, 12-10) doubles victory for Jetha & Lv against Basar & Sendogun gave England an unassailable 4-0 lead.

England had a close match against Turkiye in the Boys’ Team final, but it was 4-2 in the end, leaving England to settle for silver.

Ahluwalia lost to Ostoprak and Saggu was beaten by Nebhan, but Radiven kept England in it by defeating Ibrahim Nazar, and Radiven & Saggu then won the doubles in five against Oztoprak & Nebhan to make it 2-2 overall. But Turkiye sealed it as Ostoprak just held off Saggu in five games and Nazar then defeated Ahluwalia in four.

The competition was held in Porec, Croatia, and also included cultural activities. Look out for behind-the-scenes content on our social media channels next week!