There has been a flurry of impressive victories for sports academy players.At Hartpury College, Gloucestershire, a last-minute penalty after extra time got our boys' football squad through to the quarter-finals of the English Colleges FA Knockout Cup.

Neil Reader

There has been a flurry of impressive victories for sports academy players.

At Hartpury College, Gloucestershire, a last-minute penalty after extra time got our boys' football squad through to the quarter-finals of the English Colleges FA Knockout Cup.

Just a few weeks ago, we drew 2-2 with Hartpury in a League game. This time, Matt Chaplin made it 2-2 right at the end. The game went into extra time and we won 5-4 on penalties.

After nine spot kicks, with the scores level at 4-4, 16-year-old Chaplin put our fifth one past the keeper, sending the lads home in high spirits with a hard won victory.

Cambridge-based Hills Road College was expected to send two sides for a match against our rugby squad last week, so we were surprised when only the first team squad arrived. We beat them 76-0.

With two squads of our players ready to go, we decided to substitute the entire team at half-time, making this a real “game of two halves”.

West Suffolk coaches Ben Cooper and Nigel Brown were pleased with the display. Cooper said: “In attack, we had players taking the ball at speed with support runners coming from depth. Our defence showed good discipline and it was good that our try line was very rarely threatened. We were confident to counterattack from all positions.”

We are very grateful to Thurston RUFC who let us use their facilities.

Our girls' football team found themselves somewhat mismatched in the BCS Cup. They beat Palmers College 19-1, with goals coming from Lauren Cartwright (5), Simone Scott (4), Danielle Bitten (3), Alisha Pugh (3), Toni Chandler (3) and Jade Skillen.

Accounting student Daniel Farrow, 18, took the title of Suffolk County Champion 2009 at the table tennis County Finals at Stowupland High School.

Daniel qualified by winning the Western Area competition. He will now go through to the National U19 Table Tennis Championship at the Dome Leisure Centre, Doncaster on Saturday, April 25.