Ontario High School Squash Championships

 

   This weekend Tecumseh Vista set out to defend their Ontario High School Squash title.  Our team increased to 17 players this year, with most of them part of our junior program.  The tournament draws were broken up into a Ranked Gold and a Ranked Silver, unranked Junior Girls, unranked Senior Girls, unranked Junior Boys and unranked Senior Boys.  We had players in every draw.
     The ranked draws were incredibly strong yet David and Stefan easily moved on in the Gold draw. Ryan, Niki, Kabir and Maxi didn't have the same success in the Silver draw.  Despite all close matches, none of them were able to stay in the main round and were all relegated to the consolation.
     By far the largest draw was the Senior Boys unranked (about 40 players) and Marcus and Bryce Hughes moved on easily.  Newcomer Hope Hengsperger had little difficulty in her first couple rounds in the Senior Girls draw.  Anna Houbtchev Junior Girl's draw had a few last minute dropouts that required it to go from a draw to a round robin.  Many of our players in the Junior Boys unranked were experiencing their first tournament action and we surprised at the intensity of the matches.  Unfortunately, none of our junior boys were able to stay in the main round of that draw.
     Day 2 saw much closer matches.  David was able to move on to the finals but Stefan came across a very hot player in Akashan Rajagopaul and was off to fight for third.  Anna continued to easily defeat her opponents in her round robin and was soon headed to the finals.  Bryce met his match in the quarterfinals, losing to last year's champion, while Marcus barely broke a sweat on his way to the finals.  Hope played a great semi-final match against a very hard-hitting player.  Hope went down two but fought back to tie it up at 2 each.  After a very close and tightly-contested game 5, Hope was unable to pull out the victory.
    The finals of the Senior Boys draw was the most watched match of the weekend and it was also a rematch of our Gold final in Windsor in which David beat Akasham 12-10 in the fifth.  This match was equally entertaining with very long rallies and Akasham chasing down David's best shots.  An hour later, they are tied at 10-10 in the fifth.  Both players had match ball but couldn't pull it off.  At 13-12 for David a long rally ensued that saw Akasham dive 3 times only to get back into the rally before David finally put him away.
     Marcus was looking for redemption in his final.  He was playing the same player that knocked him out of the draw last year.  However, Marcus' training was clearly on display as he returned his opponent's best shots with better shots.  Like David, Marcus also went 5 games and pulled it out.
     Anna's final was pretty anti-climatic after David and Marcus.  Anna continued to dominate and easily rolled to victory.  Despite winning 3 golds, and a bronze, that was not enough to repeat as champs.  Lawrence Park of Toronto had 2 golds and 2 silvers.  Unfortunately, because Anna's draw was a round robin, tournament rules state that draws less than 8 cannot earn the same number of points as the bigger draws, which means we lost by a narrow margin in the end.  On a positive note, we placed 2nd, a great feat for the Windsor area and again it was commented to me that many people in the squash world are well aware of the positive things that are happening in Windsor and recognize that we are now a hotbed for new talent and a force to be reckoned with in the future.  On a personal note, I couldn't be prouder of the team and of sportsmanship they displayed.   They represented the school and the region in a very positive manner.   Pictures of the event can be found here.