David McBeath and Tressa Armitage in action at European Youth Championships

David started his European Championships alongside team mates Liam Pitchford and Sean Cullen against the powerful German team which fielded not only European Champion Patrick Franziska but also another top ranked European player Christoph Schmidl. Liam took the first match 3-2 against Schmidl and David started strongly against Franziska taking him to deuce in the first end. However the European champion was too strong and edged 14-12, 11-8 11-8. Sean Cullen went down to Arne Halter. Liam needed to beat Patrick Franziska in order to give David a chance at the win against Schmidl but it wasn't to be - Franziska was too strong and with a 3-0 win sealed the win for Germany (at least there were no penalties).

Tressa Armitage played first against the Russians in the Cadet Girls Team event and put a smile on English faces with a 3-1 win over Anna Rossikhina 11-6, 9-11, 18-16, 14-12. Emily Bates followed this up with a 3-2 win against Ekatrina Guseva. A good start but the Russian recovery started in the doubles and then they took both reverse singles to beat England 3-2.

Tressa and David have very difficult groups in the team event but we look forward to following their progress.