Mitch Calvert
Squash isn’t just a fruit served at the dinner table.
Three members of the local Sunset Country Squash Club are looking to prove just that with strong showings at the Canadian Junior championships tomorrow through Sunday at Niagara on the Lake, Ont.
Last year’s two local reps, Anika Alexander and Anniss Seid, exceeded expectations in their first go-round with several big wins and a bronze medal to show for it.
Alexander lost her opening two matches in the Gold and Silver events last year, but then rattled off 3-0 wins over Janel Gaube (B.C.) and Railynn Dane (Alberta) to capture the bronze medal.
She returns to the under-13 division as a 12-year-old with the ninth-best ranking among Ontario players.
“She said she wanted to go for the bronze, and as her coach I didn’t really believe her, but she proved me wrong,” Bob Tkachuk laughed.
“They have to belong to a club to qualify [for the rankings], and we’ve been to Toronto and played in tournaments, so they get ranked and recognized that way,” he noted.
Seid, meanwhile, was victorious in three of his five matches last year before being ousted in the Silver event.
He had opened with a dominating 3-0 win over Liam Bindle (Sask.), before losing to top-ranked Tyler Olson of B.C. in his second Gold event match.
Dropping down to the Silver event, Seid won by default due to injury against John Buck (Alta.), then followed that with a 3-0 win over Scott Freberg (B.C.).
Seid’s final match was a tough 3-0 loss to fellow Ontarian Taneer Dhanjal to end his silver-medal hopes.
Joining the pair this year will be Angel McCormick, also in the under-13 bracket, in her first trip to an event of this magnitude.
“A few kids are excelling, and this is probably the biggest event that some of them will ever see,” said Tkachuk, who runs the local junior program along with his wife, Mary-Beth.
“The Ontario Winter Games are next year, and we usually put a team in from Northwestern Ontario mixed with Thunder Bay, so that’s up there also,” he added.
Squash is played in a glass-enclosed court less than 10 metres long—a limiting factor in its hopes of getting national recognition on TV and elsewhere. But the sport is anything but dull, and requires out-of-the-box thinking and creativity.
The local club boasts a strong contingent of players who routinely travel to tournaments in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Toronto, and elsewhere, and also hosts tournaments of its own each winter that draw out-of-town entries.
