After dropping their first-round match to Malta, Cayman squash players Julian Jervis and Cameron Stafford dominated their way to winning an historic gold medal in the plate final at the 2022 Commonwealth Games on Sunday, 7 Aug.
Teams that lost in the first round of the Games were entered into the plate round, where they then competed against each other. In their plate games, Jervis and Stafford defeated three other teams to earn gold.
The Cayman duo defeated Barbados 2-0 by identical 11-7 scores to claim the plate gold and become the first squash players in Cayman’s history to secure medals at the Commonwealth Games.
“Julian and I did really well,” Stafford told the Cayman Compass. “It was actually our first time playing men’s doubles together. So, we actually make a very good team.”
Prior to their victory, Jervis, 24, and Stafford, 30, blew through their opposition, with 2-0 victories against Ghana in the quarter-finals and Papua New Guinea in the semi-finals.
“We are absolutely buzzing,” Jervis told the Compass. “It was an opportunity to display our skills and still win some really tough matches.”
Jervis, who is now a two-time Commonwealth Games competitor, had one of the more notable performances from team Cayman throughout the games in Birmingham, winning four out of his six matches.
“My last games was in 2014 (XX Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland), I was only about 16 years old and I came then really just idolising everyone that I played against but this time…it’s been really awesome seeing myself as a proper competitor against these guys and actually doing really well.”
He added that their performance showed they are capable of playing at a “high level” and that he and Stafford have a “pretty heavy medal” as proof.
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