A CHESTER primary school is celebrating after pupils emerged triumphant from the Cheshire Junior Schools Fencing Tournament.
The event was the culmination of a year’s dedicated training by pupils from six primary schools in the Chester area under the expert guidance of international fencing champion and schools coach Valerijs Scipanovs.
The tournament comprised a number of stages which have taken place over the past couple of months culminating in Saturday’s event which took place at Bishop’s Blue Coat C of E High School in Great Boughton.
Following the previous rounds, St Mary’s was in the lead being the hot favourites to win the cup.
Upton Heath, Christleton and Guilden Sutton were all on a level and the morning started with a captains’ play-off between the three schools to decide who would play St Mary’s for the title.
After some nail-biting action, Upton Heath clinched the chance to play in the final.
The first round of the final produced fairly even scores with Upton only just clinching a 20-17 victory. The second saw St Mary’s storming ahead to a magnificent 20-5 win and their winning streak continued, carrying them through to a further victory in the third round.
The next two rounds saw some superb Upton Heath displays from Juliano Simioni, Matthew Banks and captain Ashley Dawson.
Despite some brilliant attacks from the St Mary’s team, Upton’s skilled fencers went on to take victory and the cup with scores of 20-12 and 20-8 in the remaining two rounds.
The final positions in the tournament were: 1 Upton Heath CE Primary; 2 St Mary’s Catholic Primary; 3 Overleigh St. Mary’s CE Primary; 4 Guilden Sutton CE Primary; 5 Christleton Primary; 6 Boughton Heath Primary.
