By Sean Devers
ENGLAND-born Guyanese Squash player Samuel Ince Carvalhal will depart for a tri-Nation tour to hone his craft in the Canadian Open, the US Open and the British Open

The Canadian Open runs from December 10-13, while the US Open is from December 17-20 before Samuels returns to the land of his birth to compete in the British Open before spending Christmas with his family in England.

Born on January 22nd 2004 in Manchester, England, Samuel has pedigree: his grandfather Carl Ince, is Guyana’s most successful junior coach; leading Guyana to 12 consecutive Junior CASA titles before Barbados ended that streak in 2017 in Guyana’s backyard.

His cousin Daniel Ince, also the grandson of Coach Ince, represented his adopted Country at this year’s senior CASA in Jamaica last August while his mom is a member of the GSA.

“I first became interested in squash because of my grandad who first introduced me to it. I took it on seriously when I moved to Guyana at the age of around 11” said the 18-year-old, who first played Junior CASA in 2015.

Samuel’s intention is to play as many tournaments as possible for the remainder of this year and next year and join the PSA circuit.

“I’m interested in trying to play a higher level of squash and see how far I can make it in the professional field.

Some of the major tournaments I’ve played in are the junior Canadian and US open, the PanAm games in Guatemala and I recently played in the world juniors championships in France” informed the talented teenager.

His most memorable tournament to date was this year’s Senior CASA tournament in Jamaica because of the success of both of the Guyanese men and women who won gold in both categories while winning the overall team category.

“It was the first senior tournament and I felt privileged to have made an input in the team securing our victory

I’ve been preparing well for these last few tournaments as a junior. I recently started going to the gym to improve my strength and conditioning training and my overall training has just been more intense and focused on the fitness aspect to be able to compete at a higher level” Samuel continued.

“The gap from Caribbean Squash is quite significant… it’s evident that the juniors from countries such as America and England are exposed at a younger age to high intensity training and often have more access to resources and a wide array of elite players to train with. It’s difficult to match their playing standard when their training has been more advanced for a longer period of time” explained Samuel.

“My biggest challenge will likely be the different court conditions. Of course these countries are going to be extremely cold, so the way the ball bounces and moves will be very different and it may take a while for my breathing to adapt to the cold temperature.

I believe I need more exposure to better players that will allow me to bring up my playing standard and I also need to have more variety in my training that will allow me to be multi-dimensional when I play opponents with different styles.

I think that I have quite a strong foundation that I now have the ability to build on. I would like to say that I’m a solid player in terms of my movement and ball placement and I am able to vary the pace of the ball quite well instead of only being able to play at one pace” Samuel explained.

The youngster enjoys socialising with close friends whether that means going out together or relaxing and playing cards as a group. He also likes the outdoors a lot and exploring new things on trips

“I would just like to say I’m very fortunate to have the support of Harold Hopkinson at Secure Innovations and Concepts Inc. who is sponsoring the three country tour for my final junior tournaments.

I would also like to thank the people who have been major factors in my success and in my case it’s my family- my grandad as my coach and my cousin as my training partner. I would also like to thank my mom for always being the first person to support me in all of my tournaments.

I would just like to mention that the experience of worlds junior in France helped motivate me to train really hard over the last few months and that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of David Fernandes for getting us there. I’m very grateful for all the support I’ve gotten and of course having a sponsor grants me the opportunity to gain the exposure to compete” Samuel concluded.