The England juniors have fixed a blip on the radar of their history. Last year England lost the European Junior U19 Team Championships title for the first time in the 20-year history of the event. This year, they took it back, defeating France 2-1, while last year’s winner, Germany, had to settle for fourth place after losing to the Netherlands.
England also had representation in each of the U19 individual finals. France’s Camille Serme decided she wanted a birthday gift that money can’t buy, and easily defeated England’s Victoria Lust 3-0 in the final, the day before her 18th birthday. The win marked the second consecutive European U19 title for Serme, and the second consecutive loss for Lust to Serme in the event, after meeting in the third round in 2006. Joe Lee represented the English in the men’s final, but ran out of answers to Switzerland’s No. 1 seed, Nicolas Mueller. Lee won the first two games before getting dominated in the third and fourth, and taking it to a tiebreaker in the fifth, ultimately losing. Mueller is the first Swiss champion of the event. The men’s final, at 80 minutes, took nearly four times as long as the women’s.
