St Marylebone CE School from Westminster took a dramatic victory and with it the Hartshill Cup as they and Putney High School finished level on points and had to be separated by countback.
Both teams had an 8-0 victory over Acklam Grange School from Middlesbrough and it was also 8-0 for Putney over Bradford Grammar. St Marylebone defeated Bradford 7-1.
In the decisive meeting, it finished 4-4 between the top two in a see-saw match which saw the teams never separated by more than one match.
Twice, St Marylebone took the lead but were pegged back. Putney then moved in front at 3-2 but saw their opponents level up.
Eva Yared put St Marylebone back in front by defeating Martha Ground, but Putney clinched a draw as Yasmin Tunali-Flynn overcame Lily Frayssignes 3-2 (13-11, 8-11, 11-5, 8-11, 11-8).
However, when the maths was done, it was 14-12 in games in favour of St Marylebone, who had lost to Putney in the regional qualifying stage.
Their winning squad was: Nour Alamine, Eva Yared, Zeina Negm and Lily Frayssignes.
12-year-old Zeina Negm said: “I feel very happy and I can’t believe we made it this far. It’s our first time at the tournament and we needed to work hard.
“We wanted to be committed to win, and we managed to beat the team we couldn’t beat before.”
Bradford Grammar took third as they overcame Acklam Grange 6-2.
