Berkhamsted Brinkmanship Wins The Boughton Bowl

Berkhamsted Brinkmanship Wins The Boughton Bowl

Elana Garfield-Osen reports:

20/10/25: Sunday 19th October was a drizzly day but 60+ players assembled with sunny dispositions for what was the joint-largest iteration of the Mixed Team Tournament in association with Advanta Wealth.

This tournament is now in its sixth year and luckily back at Eton College to accommodate the bumper entry of ten teams of three pairs each.

The tournament welcomed for the first time its youngest-ever entrants from Prestfelde School, fellow Shropshire fivesers the Old Salopians, and the two varsity universities, who were able to send full sides with only a couple of weeks of the academic year behind them with an Old Cantabs side of recent Cambridge leavers also all present and correct. Regular competitors made up the rest of the throng: reigning champions North Oxford mustered two strong sides; Ipswich managed to field a mixed Old Ipswichian–Ipswich School team despite the tournament falling in their half-term; Berkhamsted too returned to the fray with a formidable line-up; and Team Westway were the keenest beans, entering the tournament a mere five minutes after yours truly pressed send on the invitational email.

Teams were split into two groups for a round robin, which lasted well into the afternoon. Notable group games saw Berkhamsted-turned-Eton master Ryan Perrie betraying his roots against Team Westway (but pulling few punches nevertheless); Ladies’ Champions Karen Hird and Charlotta Cooley once again meeting on opposite sides of the step — for North Oxford A and the Ipswichians respectively — and a varsity grudge match between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in which Oxford triumphed. By the time the opening sixty games were played, the Old Salopians had managed to get one over on North Oxford B — crucial wins at second and third pair proving decisive — to top Group B by 11 points to 10; in the final round of Group A, Berkhamsted needed a clean sweep to finish top, and despite a second pair win and an early lead for their first pair in what turned into the game of the group stages, they were not quite able to finagle an upset.

This set up a North Oxford derby in the semi-finals from which North Oxford A easily came out ahead after a clean 2-0 sweep at every pair. The other semi-final, on the other hand, was a nail-biter: the Old Salopians registered a quick doughnut at third pair but Bethan Miles and Ryan managed a convincing-but-close win at first pair, making the second-pair match the decider. At one game apiece, it was impossible to call for the whole of the third set, but Berkhamsted emerged victorious after a 12-11 win.

The best-of-three final was therefore a rematch of the battle for domination of Group A, which North Oxford had tipped 2-1 after a 12-11 victory at first pair. North Oxford A were arguably the fresher of the sides — having played 309 points to Berkhamsted’s 348 and afforded a rest by Berkhamsted’s three-setter semi-final at second pair — and they demonstrated the depth of their team by rollicking to victory at third pair. However, Berkhamsted had something to prove, having narrowly come second in this competition through a points-count in 2022, and when Berkhamsted’s Zoe Wheale and Ryan repeated their group-stage win at second pair, the pressure mounted on the respective first pairs. Each player on court 7 had shown themselves to have the stuff of champions: Karen has a distinct edge in numbers of trophies with her name engraved thereupon (including several Mixed Championships wins) but the younger players on court had also racked up a substantial collection: Phoenix Ashworth with his 2022 National Schools title, Jack the 2025 Men’s U21s, and Bethan having won the 2025 Ladies’ U25s just a few weeks prior. It was therefore absolutely fitting that so many players commented on the exceptional standard of the competition this year, given the firepower on display, and the first-pair final was a showpiece of this outstanding-quality fives. Berkhamsted overturned their 11-12 group defeat in the first game but lost to a rallying North Oxford A in the second, setting up a last-game thriller. It would be reductive to say that the indomitable cutting by Berkhamsted’s Bethan and Jack Pemberton — a devastating left-right one-two — was decisive, but it was certainly crucial in a claustrophically tight match in the last throes of the day’s ailing light, and Berkhamsted seemingly had an answer for almost everything thrown at them. After an opportunity for Berkhamsted to clinch the match came and went following an impressive tournament-point cut return from Bethan, North Oxford A were able to cling on for only a few shots longer before Berkhamsted finally avenged their earlier defeat and unseated the reigning champions to hold the Boughton Bowl for the first time.

Plate

The other six teams had made their way into the plate competition, with byes for the third place team in the opening round in which Westway beat Cambridge University and the Old Cantabs beat Prestfelde but did not cover themselves in glory by playing the second-pair match to 12 rather than the instructed 15 (three+ years at one of the finer institutions in the land obviously having been well spent). Ipswich and Westway therefore faced off against each other again, and since Ipswich had registered a 2-1 victory in the group stage they were perhaps justifiably confident. Westway had grown throughout the day, however, and were able to almost double their points against Ipswich from the group stage, though were unable to find a way through the experience of the Ipswich side, who were sporting many previous tournament finalists from 2019 and even a 7th-player rolling substitute. In the other semi-final, the Old Cantabs were able to display their experience against a diminished Oxford University side, who roped in Eton’s Sports Assistant, Jade Curtis, at the departure of one of their number. With Oxford the only team who were not seeing out the tournament with their full cohort of players, this marked a change from the previous 10-team entry of 2019 in which plate teams were formed from a series of mergers and the plate was won by a gaggle of players amassed from five of the starting teams: this again was an indication of the evolution of the Boughton Bowl. The 2025 competitors also demonstrated their commitment to the cause by undertaking a Plate A 3rd–4th playoff, in which Team Westway were able to continue their growth trajectory to beat Oxford University 3-0 in their first team win of the day. Meanwhile, even without Peter Boughton and Tony Stubbs, Ipswich proved themselves Plate specialists by easily repeating their 3-0 group-stage win over the Old Cantabs, including with a resounding 12-3,12-3 drubbing at second pair over an incredulous Theodore Seely, apparently stunned into submission by the realisation that the arm like a cannon against which he was competing belonged to a player still only in Year 10, the increasingly impressive Betsy Laws.

The other tournament youngsters, Prestfelde, were itching to register a win — and this time for the coveted Plate B. They came within a hair’s breadth of their first game win against Cambridge University at first pair but came out the wrong side of a second-game 12-11 scoreline. Still, by the end of the day they’d put almost as many points on the board as their combined age and had all improved markedly over the course of what was widely acknowledged to be a vintage edition of the Boughton Bowl.

Many thanks as always are due to Gareth Hoskins for helping to organise the day, to the team organisers — Gareth, Charlotta Cooley, Jessye Tu, Natalie Lilienthal, Zoe Wheale, Henry Blofield, Lucy Bland, Spencer Chapman, and Alex Aldous — to Eton College for hosting and to Advanta Wealth for their sponsorship.

Group A

North Oxford A - 11 points

Berkhamsted - 8 points

Ipswich - 6 points

Old Cantabs - 3 points

Westway - 2 points

Group B

Old Salopians - 11 points

North Oxford B - 10 points

Oxford University - 5 points

Cambridge University - 4 points

Prestfelde - 0 points