Cambs Squash

Although our league season hasn’t started yet Junior squash in the County and Area is off and running.

The Junior County Championships were held at Hunts County over 27/28 September with a great turnout and great organisation – the usual suspects Becs; Glyn and Ray Scrivens did their expected fantastic job and also big respect to Colin and Ahmed from HC whilst James was on maternity leave!!!

Must also mention “Van Es” company for stepping in as last minute sponsor.

Stars on view – well Sammy returned from injury and won his umpteenth Junior title in a good U19 final against Dan McGinn- more of whom later.

Dan and Rob Dadds put on a fantastic display in the u17 Final and Elsje Van Es returned from last years injury to win u17 and u19 competitions against Nayera El Refee and Tom Symonns won his 3rd county title

However , these guys are all old-timers and the real stars were definitely Greg Goodwin and Nadine El Refee – What an unbelievable u11 final- just down to last 2- points in a 5-set PAR. Well done kids you were fantastic.

So that’s the Stars what about PARS ? Well regular readers will have already been caught up in comments about whether PAR scoring will create shorter matches. Well I think the Juniors dispelled that thought. Yes there were short matches – but they’d have been short with the other scoring as well.
I guess the real comparison was the boys competitions featuring Daniel and Robert.

Last year with conventional scoring they produced arguably the longest Junior final anyone could remember with Rob winning in 5 sets over 70minutes.

This year Dan got his revenge in another 5-setter over 80 minutes – goodness knows how long it would have been if it had been PAR 15.

If that wasn’t enough these 2 guys played less than 24 hours later in the u19 semi producing another marathon 65mins with Dan again shading it in 4 sets this time. How Daniel had any legs to give Sammy a game 90 minutes later is beyond me.

And lastly the raffle scandal – At the end of Saturday’s play Ray Scrivens asked for a young volunteer to pick the ticket for the raffle prize – a nice Dunlop bag- Up steps the seemingly innocent 10 year old Nadine El Refee!!
She pulls a ticket – Ray calls the number and Ahmed collapses in fits of laughter as he realises Nadine has pulled out her own number!!

So to the Sunday – end of play, time for the raffle, but this time Ray is too smart – “not you this time Nadine” so he gets young Greg Goodwin to do it-
Greg pulls out the number – everyone looks around –as Nadine walks forward looking embarrassed - it was her number again!!! Fiddle or what???

With a lovely sporting gesture (or thoughts of a Corruption investigation) Nadine donates the bag to young Greg who a little earlier had beaten her in the marathon final. Nice one Nadine but we’ve go our eye on you for the next time!!!

Stop press – Congratulations go to Daniel McGinn for doubling up and adding the Area title to his County u17 Title – Dan’s becoming an expert at marathon 5set PAR matches – he won his semi final against Ross Brown 11-8 in the 5th and the Final against Nial Engerer 12-10 in the 5th.

Well done also to Elsje Van Es as silver medallist in the Girls u17 and to Greg Goodwin for a similar achievement in Boys u11