Ontario High School Squash Championships

     This weekend saw the last tournament of the year at Executive Squash and Fitness with the Ontario High School Championships.  130 players made up 13 different schools, most from the Toronto and Niagara area.  Windsor had 3 teams representing, Vista, Massey and Sandwich.  The format of this tournament is a true team format.  You rank your player from 1-7 and play against another school.  Number #1 from each school play, #2's and so on.  First team to win 4 matches moves on.  There are 3 divisions, ranked, semi-ranked and unranked.  Vista entered a team in the ranked and semi-ranked divisions while, Massey entered a ranked team and Sandwich entered a team in the unranked division.
     This was Sandwich's first time in this tournament and even though they were missing a player on their team, they finished 4th out of 12 teams.  Vista's semi-ranked team played all their opponents very tough and lost a close match in the semis.  In the end, they finished 4th out of 13 teams.
     On paper it appeared that Massey and Vista had the strongest teams and the seedings worked out as Massey and Vista ended up in the finals against one another.  Vista proved to much for Massey to handle as Vista cruised to a 5-2 victory, earning them the title as the best team in Ontario.  This marks the 2nd time that Vista has won this tournament.
     It was clear at the tournament that many of the players and coaches acknowledged strength of Windsor's junior program and all players demonstrated excellent sportsmanship on the court and great citizenship off the court.

Essex County High School Championships

 

   Windsor Squash held its 3rd annual Windsor schools championships last Friday. 21 players (15 boys and 6 girls) battled it out in various divisions with the top 4 from each school scoring for their school. The Ontario ranked players were not involved in this one but will be playing in the Ontario high school championships in a couple of weeks.  Everyone played round Robin matches to see which division they would qualify for.  Gina won the girls and Colin Moore won the boys. Vista managed to reclaim the title they lost to Kennedy last year.

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.

Windsor High School Tournament

2016 Windsor squash champs- Kennedy Clippers

     If you came by the club Friday you might have thought that you had your days wrong and it was Saturday with all the juniors around.  Or you may have thought you haven't seen many of the juniors of late and wow, have they grown.  No, it was just the 2nd annual Windsor High School Tournament.  The tournament has expanded in it second year and this year we had 25 students from 3 schools (Kennedy, Massey, Vista) competing.  This tournament is designed for players either new to the game or players that are not yet participating in Gold level tournaments.

     After a quick seeding round, players were placed in A, B, and C divisions.  Players were competing for individual honours as well as team points.  The better you did in your draw, the more points that went toward your team.  Vista, the reigning champs, showed up with a handful of players that dominated in last year's tournament and also some new face to the team.  Massey was a very new addition to the game and many of their players had only played a couple of times.  However, under the tutelage of Sara Khan, they showed much promise.  I think Kennedy thought they were in a basketball tournament as I don't think they had one player under 6 feet tall. 

     Grace Kim has been working hard with the Kennedy, training twice a week for months.  The other teams knew they were in trouble when Kennedy showed up sporting some nice uniforms.  And it was Kennedy's day as they dominated the draws.  The A final saw Kennedy's Dante Fornaserio defeat Vista's Matt Jankuloski.  The final match saw great retrieving and shot-making by both players.  In the B final it was an all Kennedy matchup as saw Erik Erickson defeat his teammate Gina Marinelli.  The C final had Massey's Mohid Nadeem defeat Vista's Hana Obeido in a very close match.  

     Congratulations to coach Kim for doing such a great job with her team.  They clearly improved as the season went on.  However, I heard Vista and Massey talking about dominating this event next year.  Kennedy and Vista are moving on the Ontario High School Squash Championships in Toronto at the end of April.
     Special thanks to Nik Bistrev, David Morrish and Graeme for helping run this event.

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.