Cayman Island’s squash team did
their country proud at last month’s Commonwealth Games in India.
The four athletes competed in two
events. Current Cayman champion Marlene West partnered Caribbean Junior Champion
Cameron Stafford and competed in the mixed doubles and bronze medallists at the
recent Central America and Caribbean Games Myron Blair and Alex Frazer competed
in the men’s doubles.
The volunteers that helped the
players included team manager Janet Sairsingh who is the current Cayman and
Caribbean Veterans Squash Champion and is the chairperson of the Cayman Islands
National Squash Association. Team coach was Dan Kneipp whose accomplishments
include coaching his brother to a gold and bronze medal at the past two Commonwealth
Games in doubles squash. The team also had the help of physical trainer Brendan
Touhey who has been working closely with the squash team for nearly a year.
Sairsingh said: “We purposely
focused our team on playing just the doubles squash. Participation in the
singles would have put us at risk of injury problems, something that was a problem
at the CAC Games and we also knew that we wouldn’t be able to compete against
the top pros in singles. We didn’t want to take a team to Delhi that was just there
to compete for the experience – we wanted to have a genuine chance of causing
upsets and getting to the medal rounds.”
Cayman’s squash teams did well,
with both going painfully close to winning their matches and continuing through
to the knockout medal round. The teams had to win one match to go through to
the next round. The score lines showed how close they went to achieving this
goal. The men lost to Zambia 11-10, 11-9 and the mixed team lost to India 11-6,
9-11, 11-5.
Sairsingh said: “There were a lot
of surprised players and teams that weren’t expecting Cayman to play so well.
Marlene and Cameron played the No.4 seeds from India and lost 2-1, taking the
second game off them. Cayman was the only amateur team to take a game off a pro
team. Both of the India players have world rankings in the top 35. There was
very little difference between winning and losing that match.”
Kneipp said: “We’ve been training
for over three years for this event. In January this year we really increased
our training intensity and along with Brendan Touhey’s fitness work we were
doing up to 10 sessions per week, each session up to two hours long. For
amateurs and volunteer coaches this was an incredible commitment.
“It showed our team and our juniors
just how hard you have to be willing to work if you want to compete at the top
level. Looking back on how the tournament went there’s not much I think we
could have done better. The only area that our team was lacking was in big
match experience. And that’s always going to be a hurdle when you’re an amateur
team. We’ve set the standard for the next Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014
and hopefully some of Cayman’s top juniors coming through can carry the torch
through and do even better than how we went this time.”
Sairsingh said: “The whole team was
track side when Cydonie won her gold and it was a great learning experience for
us for just how long you have to work and how hard you need to work to achieve
your dreams.”
She added that there were a lot of
people to be thanked for their support and hard work, including the Ministry of
Sport, Maples and Calder, Cayman Islands Olympic Committee and all of the
volunteers involved with the team including the CINSA board members and the
volunteer team coaches and manager.
·
CINSA is planning a squash
night at South Sound Squash Club where video highlights of the squash team’s
tournament and matches will be played. More information from [email protected]
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