Cardinal Vaughan And QEB Take Over The Eton Courts

Natalie Lilienthal reports:

11/06/26: Thirty schoolchildren playing Fives on the Eton courts...that might not sound particularly unusual for a news item on the EFA website, but this was a fixture with a difference.

This was the first school fixture played by the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School (certainly since COVID) who don't have their own Fives courts but walk over from school to learn their Fives at the Westway Sports Centre in London. Pupils get one hour of Fives a week and only for a few weeks as the group rotates each school term.

This fixture saw the newest Year 9 recruits, who had only had four lessons due to summer term scheduling challenges, don gloves for a fixture against the latest cohort of Queen Elizabeth's Barnet's Fives learners.

At QEB, the single Fives court is in such high demand that only Year 9s and above get a slot to play, so in the summer term the Year 8s begin vying for their Year 9 squad places by taking part in trials. The successful Year 8 traillists had only had minimal exposure to the game when they arrived at Eton on a rather rainy June day for their first matches.

We filled eoght courts with green but largely enthusiastic Fives players, many from CVMS surprising themselves with their newfound ability as competitive sportspeople. They all acquitted themselves well and improved through the session with the added bonus of coaching tips from Ryan Perrie.

The CVMS boys had to race the traffic to get back to school in time while the QEB contingent enjoyed seeing the original Fives court on the side of the chapel (in the pouring rain!)

Quite the achievement for 30 state-school pupils, with access to one single Fives courts between them at their two schools, to have met for a fixture after only a few hours of Fives tuition. We very much hope to see them all back on court again soon and to repeat the beginners fixture next year.

With my thanks to Ryan Perrie and Eton College for hosting us, Jon Hart of QEB and Lee Regan and Dan Murphy of CVMS for their support of this fixture.