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Squash Section Report to the Executive Committee
7th June 2001
The main Squash season is now over, but there is still plenty of activity in the Squash section. The inaugural Racketball Tournament attracted considerable interest, and we discovered that this is a much more demanding game than we had thought. The entries included players of all ages, and we all enjoyed an event that combined serious competition and happy socialising throughout the day, culminating in a barbecue. We are indebted to David Preedy and his daughter Nadine for explaining the rules of the game, and giving us an introductory demonstration. Our first Racketball champion is Errol Ferris, who had to dig deep to overcome David Potter in the final by 2 sets to one, having lost the opener. In the Plate event, Brian Ireland, suffering from an excess of sausages, beer and age also came back to narrowly defeat Karen Ferris by the same margin.
After a gap of several years, we reintroduced the Restricted Tournament for the Tattersall trophy. This is for players not currently of team standard, and produced a high standard of Squash, with several tight matches, none more so than the final between Ben Salcedo and Granthan Speake. Having lost the first two sets surprisingly easily, Ben got his game together, and took the next two to equalise the contest. He then quickly moved to 8-1, and looked ready to take the match. Granthan had other ideas, and heroically saved several match points, getting back into the game, and recovering to 8 all. After several changes of serve, and a number of extended rallies, Ben edged ahead to win an excellent match by 3 games to 2. It may be of encouragement to some to know that there is sport after Rowing!
We are grateful to the Rowing section for allowing us to use surplus Regatta pots as winners trophies for the Racketball and Restricted Tournaments.
The Ladder Leagues continue to expand, though completion of matches has inevitably slowed down, and fewer people are attending Club Night, particularly when the weather is fine. We may decide to send Club Night on holiday in July and August.
The next event is a Doubles competition, provisionally fixed for the weekend 14/15 July. This coincides with the annual river festival and fireworks, and the Squash section will be running a Riverside Barbecue to which all members and their friends will be welcome.
One of the light connections on court 1 was recently disturbed by ball impact and John Johnson has kindly offered to fix this for us. As the club scaffolding is not sufficiently stable at that height, we will have to hire scaffolding for a day.
Brian Ireland
Squash Captain
6 June 2001