A TEAM of 22 players and four officials will leave the country on Thursday for the Cayman Islands to represent Guyana at the Junior Caribbean Area Squash Association (CASA) Championships scheduled for July 14-25. The team breaks down to 13 boys and nine girls. In the Boys Under-11 category are Michael Alphonso, Kimir Khan, Mohyryan Baksh, and James Mekdeci.
The Boys Under-13 category is headed by defending champion Shomari Wiltshire, and includes Samuel Ince-Carvahal, and Demetrius DeAbreu. The Boys Under-15 category has Daniel Islam and Anthony Islam, while in the Boys Under-17 are Alexander Cheeks and Rithew Saywack.
The Under-19 Boys are Benjamin Mekdeci and Alec Melville.
For the Girls, it’s just Page Fernandes in the Under-11 category, while Abosaide Cadogan, Madison Fernandes and Kirsten Gomes will participate in the Girls Under-13 category.
In the Girls Under-15 are Makeda Harding and Maya Collins. Rebecca Low is the sole Under-17 representative, while Taylor Fernandes and Lorissa Wiltshire in the Girls Under-19 category round out the team.
The accompanying officials include Garfield Wiltshire in the capacity of team manager, David Fernandes as assistant team manager. Team coach remains Carl Ince, while this year’s assistant coach is last year’s Girls Under-19 champion Akeila Wiltshire.
The players will all participate for individual victories in their respective categories, before a Boys and a Girls team is decided upon to participate in the team segment of the championships.
Guyana will be seeking to defend their team title, concurrently hunting its 12 consecutive overall team titles at the tournament. The boys will also be defending the Boys team title, while the Girls team will make a try to regain a grasp on their title.
After nine consecutive Girls team titles the Guyana Girls lost the stronghold last year when the title went to Barbados. However the Boys celebrated their third consecutive win. Coach Ince believes that based on training this year the Girls are poised to reclaim their title.
“The girls have trained hard and yes I think that we can take it back. The Under-19 that came out last year, their place is being taken by competent players and I’m very hopeful, I don’t see a lot of problems.” Ince said
Most of the players on this year’s team carry some amount of experience at the regional level, with only the Under-11 players and Cadogan being newcomers to the tournament. This is the first year that the competition will be featuring an Under-11 category, an inclusion that Ince said is very commendable.
“It’s a very, very good thing, they’re not on the team. They’re only going (to participate) in the individual (division), so that kind of exposure is a very good thing to bring into the sport,” Ince noted.
Overall, Ince remarked, he expects the team to once again continue to perform well.
“Based on how well they’ve trained, and prepared, we expect them to defend their title well, and come back with another victory. They trained a little more than usual, compared to the past years, things were a little more intense this time. Because we had newcomers at the bottom that are going for the first time, so we had to step up training all around,” Ince commented.
Team manager Wiltshire is also optimistic about the team’s chances.