Belgium Junior Squash Open, November 2011

The Elite squad from our Club headed over to The Belgium Junior Open last month.  It is a key event in the junior calendar -not only for being a Super Series Event and as such holding valuable ranking (National and European) points, but also for being the last big tournament where everyone in the world comes together before the pinnacle of the season - The British Junior Open (2nd January 2012). 

As expected it was a very strong tournament, Josh Carter who has just moved up to the under 17 age group drew a top seed from the Ukraine in the first round but gave a good account of himself in a tough 3-0 loss, he then went on to make the semi finals of the plate and played some good squash all the way through.  Tom Kirby unseeded due to lack of European tournaments came though some tough matches and ended up 5th after losing to Emyr Evans form Wales who took 2nd place overall.  Catherine Finalyson showed some good form after recent hard training and took 3rd place after beating both the UK  number 2 and number 5 as well as the German number 1.  It was a very successful trip, all players improved and now have a lot of work ahead of them before the Open at the start of January.

Gary Hinton