T&T's girls land­ed sec­ond place at the Caribbean Area Squash As­so­ci­a­tion Ju­nior Team Cham­pi­onships which con­clud­ed on Thurs­day at the Liguanea Club, Kingston, Ja­maica. The lo­cal girls won four of their five round robin match­es, to place be­hind team Guyana which re­mained un­de­feat­ed through­out the en­tire tour­na­ment. On Thurs­day the na­tion­al girls clinched a 3-2 win over the Cay­man Is­lands. Reign­ing se­nior women's cham­pi­on, Char­lotte Knag­gs, was once again no match for her op­po­nent Lara Conol­ly. The lo­cal un­der-17 top-seed­ed play­er eas­i­ly took the first two sets 11-2, 11-4, and then em­bar­rassed Conol­ly with an 11-0 bash­ing in the third. Un­der-15 in­di­vid­ual third place fin­ish­er, Mar­i­on Faith Gillezeau, dis­card­ed Ni­na Fos­ter 11-2, 11-3, 11-4. T&T's third point was ob­tained from a walkover giv­en to Marie Claire Bar­cant. Talia Ab­dool and An­gelique failed to come out on top their match­es, as both lost 3-0 to Eilidh Bridge­man and Kristi­na Myren re­spec­tive­ly.

The T&T girls' on­ly loss came from a close 3-2 de­feat con­ced­ed to first place fin­ish­ers Guyana. Bermu­da fin­ished third on three points fol­lowed by host Ja­maica on two points. Un­for­tu­nate­ly the lo­cal boys could not se­cure T&T a top three fin­ish as they end­ed their cam­paign in fourth place. The boys were giv­en the boot in the semi­fi­nal stage with a 4-1 whip­ping from the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) team. The na­tion­al boys were then seek­ing for some re­demp­tion as they made a bid for third place in their play­off against Guyana. Na­tion­al boys' un­der-17 cham­pi­on, Nku Patrick, got things off to a good start by tak­ing a straight set 11-7, 11-5, 11-7 win over Jean-Claude Jef­frey.

Guyana re­tal­i­at­ed in the next game with a vic­to­ry from Shomari Wilt­shire who got the bet­ter of na­tion­al boys' un­der-13, Nicholas Cad­dle, 11-3, 11-7, 11-5. But Nku's old­er broth­er, Man­dela, brought T&T back up 2-1, with a 3-0 (11-5, 11-3, 11-4) sweep over Ja­son-Ray Khalil. How­ev­er, Ben­jamin Mekde­ci will even the score again with an 11-3, 11-9, 11-9 win over Chad Sa­landy. In the de­cid­ing match, un­der-19 play­er Stephen Xavier, did his best to bring home the bronze for T&T but was no match for Michael Ben­jamin who won 11-3, 11-8, 11-6. Bermu­da was crowned the boys' win­ning team af­ter a 4-1 vic­to­ry over the OECS in the fi­nal.

FI­NAL TEAM STAND­INGS

Girls

1st Guyana (5 points)

2nd T&T (4 points)

3rd Bermu­da (3 points)

4th Ja­maica (2 points)

5th Cay­man (1 point)

6th Bar­ba­dos (0 points)

Boys

1st Bermu­da

2nd OECS

3rd Guyana

4th T&T

5th Ja­maica

6th Cay­man Is­lands

7th Bar­ba­dos

8th Ba­hamas