Just want to say a huge congratulations to the Scottish Youth Darts Team. Scottish Youth Darts International Team were in Latvia playing in the WDF Europe Cup Youth event. The team comprises of 4 boys and 2 girls. This year saw the highest no. of Countries Entering with 26 Boys Teams and 25 Girls teams registered.
Thursday started Match Play with the Boys Pairs in the morning,
Barry & Kyle - Gibraltar v Scotland – lost 3 -2 then Scotland v Denmark – won 3 – 1
Mitchell & Logan – Iceland v Scotland – lost 3 – 2 then Scotland v Gibraltar – won 3 – 0
Both boys teams qualified 2nd in their groups into the KO stage to the last 32. Unfortunately Mitchell & Logan came up against in form Republic of Ireland players Sean McKeown & Aidan O’Hara and lost 4-2 in a class match.
Barry & Kyle drew the Welsh pair Fabian Tapner & Ben Lewis and this match came to the last leg decider with them losing 4-3 to the Welsh boys. Getting out the groups was excellent and valuable points were gained.
The Girls event started with Singles on Thursday morning – after the Round Robin Group Matches we continued to find the Semi Finalists for Saturdays Stage Matches. Unfortunately Jessica didn’t qualify out her group but points counted for the overall championship
The boys had a few hours to relax before their singles competition started in the afternoon. Meanwhile the girls were playing in their Singles Round Robin competition. It was a bit of a baptism of fire for Jessica and was unlucky with her doubles but never gave up but failed to
Jessica – Iceland v Scotland – lost 3 – 1 then Slovenia v Scotland – lost 3 – 1
Sophie – Scotland v Germany – won 3 – 0 then Scotland v Latvia – won 3 – 0
Sophie showed her dominance in her group with 2 wins which put her through the group stages.
Sophie then went on to win her next matches
Last 32 match 4 – 2 against Abbie Brewster of Wales
Last 16 match 4 – 1 against Hannah Meek of England
Last 8 match 4 – 1 against Krisztina Turai of Hungary
This then put Sophie into Saturday’s Semi Final and we knew at that point she would be playing Englands Paige Pauling who is the WDF no. 1 ranked player.
The Boys Singles were again played as a Round Robin with Mitchell and Kyle in a group of 3 and Logan & Barry in a group of 4
Mitchell v Leo Flegar (Slovenia) – win 3 – 0, Mitchell v Franceso Basili (Italy) – win 3 – 2
Kyle v Balazs Szotak (Hungary) – lost 3 – 1, Kyle v Adam Sikora (Poland) – win 3 - 2
Mitchell finished 1st in his group and Kyle finished 2nd in his group
Barry v Jacob Todd (NI) – win 3 – 1, Barry v Barry van der Velden (Neth) won 3 – 2, Barry v David Balogh (Hungary) – lost 3 – 0
Logan v Senne Aerts (Belg) – lost 3 – 0, Logan v Daan Toxopeus (Netherlands) won 3 – 2, Logan v Mats Theobald (Ger) lost 3 - 2
Unfortunately neither Logan or Barry made it out their groups. There were some great matches played during the Singles by all 4 boys but both Barry & Logan should be proud of their achievements in their groups.
Top 2 from each group qualified into the last 64 and saw Kyle playing the defending singles champion from 2023 and Yorick on this occasion was too strong for Kyle to overcome and lost 4 – 1.
Mitchell on the other hand wasn’t finished for the day
Last 64 – won 4 – 0 against Laurynas, Krilavicius (Lithuania)
Last 32 – won 4 – 0 against Ralfs Laurmainis (Latvia) with a 101.90 average – Rafls is currently no 1 in the WDF rankings.
Last 16 – won 4- 3 against Sebastian Lofgreen (Denmark)
Last 8 was the furthest any or our boys team went in the Singles with Mitchell losing to the eventual winner Jenson Walker current WDF World Cup Singles winner 4-3.
Friday morning saw the Boys starting the Team event which is a R/R with each player playing 1 leg of darts against all opponents.
Scotland v Gibraltar – won 9 – 2, Scotland v Belgium – won 9 – 5, Scotland v Italy – won 9 – 3
These results meant that the boys qualified out their group and would the results of the other groups unfolding. We knew that we would play the Runner up in Group 6 which included England who were favourite to win their group so we thought that we would play Turkey in the last 16. But to our surprise Turkey beat England in their match and we were then drawn to play England in the last 16. To say it was a nervous / fantastic match that would be an understatement and we had to dig deep to try and get to 9 legs to win the match. With the match set at 8 – 7 to Scotland Logan Gilmour was up against Alfie Busby – Logan started the match with the perfect 180 then 140 but with Alfie leaving 16 after 18 darts Logan took his chances and took out 32 to win the match 9 – 7.
With only a few minutes to try and get ready to play the quarter finals was just too much for the team and they kept fighting for every dart but Netherlands were just too strong for us and won the match 9 – 1 and we thought that we were seeing the eventual winners of this event with their strong performance.
While this was all going on the Girls were going about their business in the Pairs competition
Scotland v Denmark – won 3 – 1, Scotland v Germany – won 3 – 1, Scotland v Rep Ireland – lost 3 - 1
With these results and others going our way in the group we finished 1st in our group and were drawn to play the runner up of group 3 (Italy) and included the 2022 & 2023 Europe Cup Singles champion. It was a really close match with Scotland coming out winners at 3 – 2.
Onto the Quarter Finals against Slovakia Girls – won 3 – 1, then Semi Finals against Finland Girls – won 3 – 1 and through to the Final that would be played on Saturday.
To give the girls an event to play in while the Boys continued their 4 person team the organisers created a comp of Mixed Country Pairs event for the girls – Sophie was paired with a player from Turkey and they won both their matches in the Round Robin 2 – 0. Jessica was paired with Iida from Finland but unfortunately lost both their matches 2 – 1 & 2 – 0 so didn’t progress out their group.
Top 16 saw Sophie & Zehra win 2 – 0, Top 8 Sophie & Zehra won 2 – 0, Semi Finals Sophie & Zehra won 2 – 0 and in the final they won 3 – 2
We were all finished for the day and knew that we started again with Sophie v Paige at 10am on Saturday morning – Paige was the favourite going into this match as no1. In WDF rankings but Sophie didn’t let this affect her game and took the match 4 – 1
Next match we were involved in was the Girls Pairs Final match against her mixed country partner from Turkey Zehra and her partner Dilara – it was a really close match and came down to the deciding leg which Sophie & Jessica came out on Top to become the European Youth Cup Pairs Champions.
With this win we then knew that Scotland had become overall champions because no-one could catch up on us in the points table. We were sitting on 56 points by then and next team to us were on 39 points with 1 comp to go.
Sophie was all ready to play in this final match and was determined to take the Singles title from the 2022 & 2023 champion Aurora from Italy. Sophie continued her dominance in the Singles and after 24 minutes checked out 25 giving her the win 5 – 1 and giving the final points to Scotland producing a 23 point gap between 1st & 2nd place in the championship. After all the excellent results the boys team finished a respectable 10th out of 26 teams.
I am super proud of all the players in the way they played and also conducted themselves. They were a credit to their families and had a fantastic time.
Sharon
