England squad stars head to Nottingham for junior nationals clash

The World Championships badge collides with the domestic pecking order in Nottingham this weekend, where Ella Pashley, Tianer Yu and Joseph Hunter arrive as the names everyone else is chasing. The Mark Bates Ltd Junior & Under-21 National Championships run at David Ross Sports Village, University of Nottingham, on Saturday May 16 and Sunday May 17, and Table Tennis England has given the event a ranking weighting of x2.0.

That extra weight matters because the Under-21s are no longer folded into the Senior Nationals. Since 2025, they have been staged as a standalone age-group event, which means the players carrying senior international pedigree now have to prove it against a domestic field that knows exactly how to judge them. In Nottingham, the seeding sheets make the target clear. Yu is top seed in the Under-21 Women’s Singles, Sophie Earley is second and Pashley is third, setting up the possibility of a semi-final rematch if the draw holds.

The history between Yu and Pashley gives that section real bite. Yu beat Pashley in the 2024 Under-21 final, back when the category was still part of the Senior Nationals, and now the two could meet again with a fresh title and extra ranking points on the line. Earley brings her own pressure. She won the Junior Girls’ Singles in 2025 and completed three titles across that weekend, but she is now too old to defend that junior crown, so her move into the Under-21 frame changes the balance at the top.

The men’s draws have the same layered tension. Joseph Hunter is top seed in the Under-21 Men’s Singles, with Larry Trumpauskas second and Isaac Kingham third. Hunter and Trumpauskas both reached Finals Day at the Senior Nationals in March 2026, so they arrive in Nottingham with senior-level credibility, not just age-group promise.

The Junior Boys’ Singles is equally loaded. Max Radiven is top seed, Abraham Sellado is second, Kingham is third and Kacper Piwowar is fourth, while Jakub Piwowar, last year’s Junior Boys champion, has moved up and is seeded sixth in the Under-21 field. That kind of turnover is exactly why these championships matter: they show who is rising, who is holding position and who is about to be overtaken.

Doubles could tilt the weekend just as sharply. Radiven and Rohan Dani beat Hunter and James Hamblett 13-11 in the deciding game of last year’s Under-21 Men’s doubles final, which is the kind of margin that turns a seeding favourite into a chaser in one end change. Earley now pairs with Anna Green, Pashley teams with Sienna Jetha, and three champion pairs from last year return across the doubles draws, keeping the title-defence storyline alive.

With London 2026 looming as a centenary World Championships and the England squad already on that stage, Nottingham has become the domestic checkpoint underneath it. In these age groups, the international names are no longer the story alone. They are the standard everyone else is trying to catch.