Squash

This year was an exciting year for squash at St Paul’s, with lots of boys playing in their games halves, the return of club squash for all year groups, a range of friendly fixtures, and the return of the Roehampton Schools Invitation tournament where the boys managed to come 5th despite being a player down. Also, after years of excellent work we said goodbye to Gary O’Brien in December and welcomed Vini Rodrigues as a coach to the squash team to work alongside Yawar Islam in providing the boys with exceptional coaching.

The real highlight of the year, however, was having both the U19s and U16s qualifying for the England National Schools Championships in Nottingham –a huge achievement and making us only one of two schools to qualify for both age categories.

The U19s – consisting of George Livesey, James Rossiter, Rana Sarin, Olly Hatfield, and Tom Jensen – managed this with hard fought battles in the 2nd qualifying round, defeating a very strong Harrow 3-2 and Aylesbury Grammar School 4-1.

The U16s – consisting of Adrian Siniscalco, Neil Prabhu, Emerick McMahon, Darshy Pandey, and Nabil Alizadeh – had a tough task having drawn Felsted and a very strong Truro side in the 2nd qualifying round. With our boys and Truro both defeating Felsted 5-0 it came down to a straight shoot-out for a place in the National Finals. With the scores locked at 2-2, Adrian Siniscalco mustered everything he had to defeat Truro’s first seed and send our boys to the Nationals in Nottingham to join the U19s. This gave the boys the opportunity to test themselves against the best schools in the country and be part of an exciting festival of squash. The U16s performed excellently and were unlucky not to claim a place on the podium, finishing fourth. This included what was probably the game of the day against Aylesbury Grammar where both schools were so evenly matched that every match went to the wire. With the scores at 2-2 and only 2nd seed Neil Prabhu left to play, it proved to be a tense finish. But Neil held his nerve to win 2-1 with the final game going all the way to 15-13 as both competitors gave their all. The players eventually lost the semi-finals to eventual winners Epsom and missed out on third place in a close fought battle with Shelley College, losing 3-2, but fourth is an incredible achievement and the future looks bright with these players moving into the senior team next year.

Unfortunately for the U19s, a clash with the Rackets Nationals meant that only one of the team that qualified could attend the Nationals in Nottingham. Despite this, Vikram Bhamre, Arjun Rajkumar, Yusuf Kundgol, and Neil Prabhu (playing up an age category and for the second day) stepped in to join James Rossiter and put in a strong performance to finish eighth.

Next year, we are looking forward to another exciting year of squash and with the success of the players this year and some strong players in the 4th and 5th form, the future looks to be very promising. ❚ Matthew Goldup