Another wrap-up following another remarkable week in the SQUASH TIGERS WORLD!
This past week we welcomed Coach Claire who added tremendous value to our camp and started getting to know everyone! We missed Coach Colin who is up in Ithaca at Cornell Camps, but will be back next week. Finally the weekend saw a ton of us at a Gold in CT, a Silver in PA and the Battle of the Borders in Philly. It doesn’t get any better than that!
Let’s go to Connecticut first and recap the PPS Chelsea Piers Summer Junior Gold. We had 16 players across all divisions, a bundle of great results and a Head Coach with square eyes after coaching 40+ Zoom matches!
I’m burying the lede, as they used to say in the newspaper world… I should be pointing out that we had THREE OF THE CREW IN A QUARTER FINAL! Our own Williams sister types, Lily and Mimi along with the big dog himself, Parth all represented well and pulled into the quarter finals! However, as with all headlines, they don’t tell the story of what was an awesome weekend in the Nutmeg State!
The girls were resolute and played hard up and down the divisions. As we said, Mimi in the GU11 and Lily in the GU13 both made the quarter finals again, but there were other great stories. Angela in the GU15 decided it wasn’t enough to upset an opponent rated 0.2 above her, but then backed it up upsetting another opponent 0.3 ahead. Madeleine played wonderfully well in the GU13 as did Anya in the GU17. Our other GU17 competitor, Claire motored away, causing her own upsets and finishing 10th.
Parth was his usual self in the BU17, finishing top 8, but the performance of the boys was perhaps Will. I’m not a great man for statistics, but I do have a pretty good memory and can't remember the last time one of the boys defeated an opponent rated 0.57 above them in the first round of a Summer Gold! The BU15 saw our guys, Eric, Arjun Edward and JJ do great things with JJ in particular coming in 10th and the others making it hard for their opponents! Finally, Tyler in the BU13 is stepping up to the mark and showing the benefit of a hard core summer training program!
The University of Pennsylvania hosted one of the more popular Silver Tournaments in recent times. We had several participants, standouts being Ayan, who played up a storm and came in 3rd in the BU17 and our U11 crew, Leo and Chloe, who finished in 3rd and 5th place respectively. Bigger things ahead for this crew…
The US National base, the Specter Center in Philadelphia saw the “Battle of the Borders”. This contest features the top 4 players in the U13, U15 and U17 who come together in a fairly social fashion to contest some matches with our Canadian brethren! From a NJ perspective, we had Alex, Colten and Reghan selected and they moved pretty much unencumbered through their matches.
This week we see camps continue at the club! For those LOB connoisseurs, now is the time to look up and lift that ball…! I love lob week! We have another Gold in 2 weeks time, and solid block of time left in summer to make that big jump. Let’s make every day count!
