Weekly Update May 24th 2016

Dear All,

I hope you had a great long weekend.

LEAGUESThere are no leagues this week.  Please double check schedules for next week and inform your opponents if you cant make it.  Please please keep remembering to cancel courts when you rearrange matches.

 A League ScheduleB League Schedule

CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPSThis Saturday is the final of the the club championships.  I have added the times to the draws which can be found HERE.


DAVE MORRISH 50 UP BIRTHDAY BASHThis Friday is a special social event.  To help Dave celebrate his big 50th I am organizing an evening of fun squash games.  Please sign up HERE to help me plan!!   ALL WELCOME

UK RACKETBALL V CABOTO CLUB  JUNE 10THI am still looking for sign ups for the UK Racketball match V the Caboto Club on June 10th.  Matches will start at 7.30pm.  Please sign up HERE

Ontario High School Squash Championships

     This weekend many of our juniors competed in the Ontario High School Squash Championships at Executive Squash in Vaughn.  There were 115 players competing from ten schools throughout Ontario.  The usual powerhouses were there including A.N. Meyer (Niagara) and defending champ, Lawrence Park (Toronto).  Tecumseh Vista was the 3rd largest team at 16.  It was great to see the addition of Kennedy and Massey this year.  The Massey team was started by the Khan girls and they were able to recruit enough players to field a team.   Grace Kim at Kennedy has done a great job all season getting her players out on a regular basis.   All told, the Windsor area brought 25 players to the tournament.
     The tournament divisions were broken up into ranked players and unranked players. The unranked players were divided into junior/senior and male/female.  The #1 seed, Akasham Rajagopaul, was fresh of his win at the Nationals the week before so to say that the competition was tough was an understatement.

   Team Kennedy quickly discovered how difficult tournament play could be, however as they played more matches throughout the tournament, all their play improved.  By the end of the weekend, Kennedy was eager to get home and practice more.  Massey was led by #1 seed in the ranked girls draw, Sara Khan, and by #2 seed in the unranked draw, Zahra Khan.  Sara dominated all the way to the finals where she was unable to put away the #2 seed.  Zahra dominated her draw all the way to the very end and won the Junior Girls Unranked division.  Well done girls!  Two big wins alone earned them enough points to be in the top half of all the teams.
      Tecumseh Vista had a mix of boys/girls, ranked/unranked and had a player in every draw.  Vista also made up 3 of the 4 ranked girls in the tournament.  Alec Cerimagic survived a couple of very tough 5-game matches to make it to the finals of the Junior Boy's Unranked final.  The final was incredibly close and saw Alec give up a 2-0 lead.  It went right down to the wire but Alec pulled it out in the end.  Well done Alec!
      Vista's other winners included Hope Hengsperger (2nd) & Simone Jankuloski (3rd) in the Senior Girls Unranked division, Berto Mill (3rd) in the Boys Ranked and Hannah Guthrie (3rd)  Girls Ranked and Matt Jankuloski won the Boys Unranked Consolation.
     However, in the end, Tecumseh Vista didn't earn enough points to take the title and ended up finishing 3rd.  All in all a great success for Windsor and the future looks very bright for our high school teams.  Pictures of the event can be found  here and final results can be found here.

Summer Solstice/ Golf Tournament

2014- Best Dressed,
Arthur Nagy

      Save the Date!  This year will be our 3rd annual golf tournament and we have decided to change the format.  We are sending this out much earlier than usual because we have much bigger plans for the tournament.  The venue has moved to Rochester Place and we have changed the date to take advantage of the nicer weather.  The new date is Saturday, July 16.  We have also combined the golf with a summer party for our non-golfers.
     Rochester is a great venue for a summer party and it will give our non-golfing members an opportunity to join the golfers for dinner and party after their round.  We will have a DJ, prize table and an assortment of games.      
     We appreciate those who sponsored last year and again this year we are looking for sponsors.  We have formalized our sponsorship program and a letter will be going out shortly to all potential sponsors.  Sponsorship this year will be $250 and that will get you signage on a hole, acknowledgement on the junior squash bulletin board and on our social media.  Also, we are accepting donations for items to auction off.
      Payment can be made by cash or cheque (payable to WSF Junior Fund).  Sorry no house charge.  Sign up is open and can be done at the front desk.

TTC

     

New junior game... don't ask, you
don't want to play it

What a weekend of squash!  The competitiveness (is that a word?) throughout all the divisions was incredible.  Where to begin?  Let's start with the B draw.  The B draw became the draw that the "bracket challenge" took place in.  It was a full 32 player draw and there were no clear favourites.  Luca Dalla Bona was the local favourite chosen to win it, while the out-of-towners stayed loyal and chose their players.  In the end, only 1 person correctly chose one of the finalists and he ended up $190 richer!  Complete breakdown of score can be found here. 

     The C draw was hotly contested throughout the weekend but in the end it was 2 local buddies playing in the final.  Adam Pole and James Konrad played their 34th match of the year to decide the winner.  Despite James' new found fitness, Adam had too many shots for James to handle.  Bragging rights belong to Adam for the next 6 months. Congratulations to Adam for winning the C draw!

     The A division was a very tough division all weekend.  All matches were close and it was anyones draw to lose.  However, our own Mr. Ben Gay... I mean David Morrish,  somehow was still standing (barely) late Sunday afternoon to claim the A draw.  Dave's shot-making overcame all his opponents strengths.  I think David has booked himself "unable to walk for the next week".  And to think he wanted to play 40+......

     The Open final brought out many spectators who were keen to see how the student-who-moved-away would do against the teacher-who-trained-him.  Yes, David Mill vs. Graeme.  Both players seemed in top notch form all weekend and the final was a very entertaining event.  However, as all of us adults will find, our upward curve (or is it downward?) isn't quite as steep as the juniors.  David proved too much for Graeme and took the match 3-1.  

     While many of the juniors opted to play in the skilled divisions, we still had a strong junior division draw.  The winner of the junior division and possibly also the player that played the most matches in one weekend was newcomer Alec Cerimagic.  You could see Alec get stronger every match he played as the weekend went on.  Oh to be young....

Open Final, Graeme v David Mill

     The doubles draws proved to be as entertaining as always.  The Women's division was extremely close with Hannah Guthrie and Mackenzie Elliott winning two 5-gamers in a row to take the win.  In the mixed doubles division, Herb Funkenhauser and Marg Holman defeated Steve (I haven't slept this weekend) Allen and Janice Funkenhauser.  Janice, in an attempt to improve her chances for a win, upgraded her partner with a newer and younger model but to no avail.  The B doubles final went the distance with Dave Guthrie and Dean Lansens taking on an all-female Seth team.  In the end, the girls out-mistaked the boys. 

     The A final was an all-London affair, well almost.  Windsor was represented by Mark Eugeni as Brad Hanebury's partner against Chris Boden and Caleb Quinlan.  Mark and Brad just had too many shots for the young upstarts from London.  

     All in all it was a great weekend.  Thanks to everyone that came from out of town (London, Sarnia), thanks to the beer sponsors (Jeff Derochie, Sleeman's, Anonymous(no, not the hacker group)), and thanks to Graeme and Dave for putting on a great event.  Final standings can be found here.  

     

Ontario Open

Ananya Maheshwari
U11 Ontario Champ

      White Oaks in St. Catherines was the host site of this year's Ontario Open and Windsor had 15 players participating.  This tournament always brings out the best players and the competition was fierce.  Windsor players were also fortunate enough to be coached by Anthony Graham, an active PSA pro who was in town for the weekend to train with Dave.  However, the strength of the draw took its toll on Windsor as Aparna, Ananaya, Amin, David, Sara, and Berto were the only ones who were able to pull out a first round victory and stay in the main round.  The rest of the weekend saw great squash amongst all the Windsor players.  Once again Ananya Maheshwari dominated the U11 without losing a game the entire tournament and add another title to her amazing season.  Well done Ananya!  Sara Khan also won the consolation draw.
      This tournament is also when Squash Ontario awards one female and one male player for the Jim Mason Play Fair Award.  The award recognizes players who have demonstrated fair play on and off the court and is an ambassador for the game of squash in Ontario.  This year's recipient was none other than our David Mill.  David was honoured for his great demeanour as a player and also being a positive influence on squash in Ontario.  Jamie Nicholls (Executive Director of Squash Ontario)

also took this opportunity to recognized the "amazing" things that are going on in Windsor right now. Congratulations David, you earned it!
     All the juniors would like to thank Anthony for coaching them this weekend.  Full results can be found here.

Bottle Drive Over

     If you ever wondered how much your garage that is full of empties is worth?  Well, you don't have to wonder anymore.   We had an informal contest as to how much money sat in the front room in the form of empties.   Any guesses?  Let's just say that the guy working at The Beer Store had a hard time believing that all this came from a health club.  Don't worry.  We said it was our members "friends" that brought in the empties :).  After 2 hours of counting the junior's added $507 to their fund.
     In regards to the junior fund, a lot has happened with it over the past year.  The fund has grown and now supports many more things.  It subsidizes lessons, clinics, pays for Windsor players to have a coach at out of town tournaments, provides a bursary to graduating juniors, and help supports our gold tournament.  The juniors appreciate the members support of them and would like to thank everyone that donated bottles (including the person that dropped off full ones).

    On a side note, book off Saturday, July 16 for this year's golf tournament.   The venue has been moved to Rochester Place and it will also coincide with a summer party for club members.  Stay tuned for details.

Ontario Junior Team Squash Championships

     The Squash Ontario Team Tournament was held this weekend at the Ontario Racquet Club in Mississauga.  The province is broken up into 8 regions (Toronto gets 2 teams) and each team consists of 8 players.  All the regions are then split into 2 round robins.  The top 4 teams in the round robins move onto a 4-way playoff.  Team Southwest consisted of:

U13- Usman Khan/ Aparna Maheshwari
U15- Riley Bore (Sarnia)/ Hannah Guthrie
U17- Berto Mill/ Anna Houbtchev
U19- David Mill/ Arden McKillop (London)

      The tourney got off to a good start for Team Southwest with Aparna dominating her opponent with her improved play in the first match of the night.  However, in the end, Mississauga beat us 5-3.    
      The next day we took on Team North York.  In an interesting series of events Team North York had a new player on their team, one Amin Khan.  Amin actually lost out in a qualifier to Riley Bore  (Sarnia) to get into the tournament.  However, North York was short players (as was Team Western Ontario who recruited Sara Khan and Team Muskoka who recruited Ananya) so they recruited Amin Khan.  As luck would have it, Riley and Amin met on Saturday morning and the match did not let down the spectators.  Both players made incredible shots, showed incredible retrieving ability and entertained the ever-growing crowd.  However, thankfully for us Riley proved too tough.  Sorry Amin :).  We ended up defeating North York 5-3.
     Our next match was against Ottawa and again, we won 5-3.  This was enough to get us into the playoff round where we drew one of the Toronto teams.  Unfortunately, Toronto was just too strong and took the match 6-2.  However, we went out on a high note as Berto Mill pulled off an upset in his match by leaving blood, sweat and skin all over the court.
     Sunday saw Team Southwest in a battle for 3rd place with Western Ontario.  The battle went back and forth throughout the lineup.  By the time the last match of the tournament rolled around, Western was up 4-3.  That left a lot of pressure on David Mill's shoulders.  David had to win to go to a tie breaker.  David was playing Ravi Seth, yes Micaala's younger brother, and the match went back and forth until they reached the final few points of game 5.  It was standing room only as the crowd cheered and hollered after each point.  However, David made a couple of uncharacteristic mistakes in the last few points that allowed Ravi to take the match.  Team Ontario 4th place.
     This is definitely one of the more enjoyable tournaments for the kids as they hang around and cheer on their teammates throughout the weekend.  It is by far the loudest squash tournament you will attend.  Team Southwest proved that they are a force to be reckoned with.  Who would have thought the other teams would be looking to southwestern ontario for extra players???  Big thanks to Derek Moore of London for coaching the team this year.  Complete draws can be found here.