St.Olave's Boys Master The Midlands

St.Olave's Boys Master The Midlands

02/11/26: Olavian schoolboys Krivi Bhavsar & Aayan Shetty won the 2026 Midlands Tournament at Repton on Sunday with a thrilling 15-14 final win after a gruelling weekend's Fives.

This year's Midlands Tournament featured 40 players, with the large Olavian contingent joined by some local Reptonians and a range of familiar faces from the club Fives scene.

There was a change to the format this year, with Saturday's play given over to an Individual competition, with players allocated handicaps and then paired up in different combinations with different opponents over a series of rounds. This produced a final between Old Olavian Seb Cooley and his St.Olave's school partner Arush against two more Olavian school pupils in Luke & Dhruv, Seb managing to steer the game to a 12-7 victory for his pair.

Sunday reverted to the more traditional Main/Festival pairs format, although with ten pairs in each the majority of the day's play was two large all play all round robin groups. The format definitely favoured youth over experience in the Festival, some of the older pairs falling by the wayside as the day went on, leaving four of the younger Olave's pairs to battle it out in the semi-finals and final, Ivan & Axel eventually emerging on top.

The main competition was also not for the faint-hearted, with nine group matches - none of them easy - to negotiate. Olavian L6th pair Aayan Shetty & Krivi Bhavsar came out on top with a full house of nine wins from nine, including a thumping 12-2 win over nearest rivals Gwydion Wiseman & Joey Prior, who came second ahead of Seb & Dhruv thanks to a win in the head to head match up. The top four was completed by Lancing's Alex Abrahams & Matt Davis but with no time for a full set of knockout games, Seb & Dhruv beat Alex & Matt for third while the other two pairs faced off in the final.

Gwydion & Joey had learned their lesson from earlier in the day and were on it from the start this time, starting strong and heading into a 9-3 lead. Krivi & Aayan showed real composure not to panic at this point, realising that 15 was still some distance away and trusting the gameplan that had got them through the group phase unbeaten. All four players were producing some terrific Fives and once Krivi & Aayan had levelled at 11-11 there was little or nothing to choose between them. Gwydion & Joey got to 14 first and had a couple of half-chances they couldn't quite convert, before Krivi & Aayan squared things up once again at 14-14. Both sides had further opportunities serving for the match but in the end it was Krivi & Aayan who won the decisive point to clinch the title.

Our thanks go to Howard Wiseman & Dominique Redmond for organising and running the whole weekend, to Karen Hird and Repton for hosting the competition on their fantastic courts and to everyone who travelled up to Derbyshire to continue an Autumn half-term tradition that has now been going for nearly 20 years since the Midlands Tournament was first revived back in 2007.

Saturday Individual Tournament

Final

Seb & Arush beat Luke & Dhruv 12-7

Sunday Main Tournament

Group Stage

1. Krivi & Aayan W 9 L 0

2. Gwydion & Joey W 7 L 2

3. Seb & Dhruv W 7 L 2

4. Alex & Matt W 6 L 3

5. Howard & Oscar W 4 L 5

6. Yifan & Luke W 4 L 5

7. Karen & Henry W 3 L 6