Sh­er­nice Thomas

It took quite some ef­fort but even­tu­al­ly T&T's men's team got the bet­ter of de­fend­ing over­all cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos 3-2 in their group "A" on the first day of the team match­es at the Caribbean Area Squash As­so­ci­a­tion (CASA) Cham­pi­onships on Wednes­day. Na­tion­al un­der-19 boys' cham­pi­on, Man­dela Patrick, got things off to a good start for the lo­cal men af­ter de­feat­ing Mark Gilkes 3-1 (11-6, 11-1, 8-11, 11-6). Up next was six-time na­tion­al cham­pi­on Col­in Ra­mas­ra who faced Shawn Simp­son. Ra­mas­ra, who was boot­ed out of the men's open in­di­vid­u­als in the third round, went down to Simp­son 11-8, 11-7, in the first two sets. But Ra­mas­ra sprang to life in the next two sets 11-7, 11-5, to even the score 2-2. But just when it seemed like the lo­cal play­er got back in the win­ning groove, it was Simp­son who would have the fi­nal edge in the de­ter­min­ing set win­ning 11-9, to bring the over­all score 1-1. All was not lost how­ev­er, thanks to Josh Pinard and Kale Wil­son who brought home the win for T&T.

Pinard, the na­tion­al reign­ing men's cham­pi­on, beat Gavin Cum­ber­batch 3-1 (11-7, 7-11, 11-9, 11-7) while Wil­son brought T&T up 3-2 by dis­miss­ing Rhett Cum­ber­batch in straight sets (11-6, 11-7, 11-9). Ba­jan Bryant Cum­ber­batch got the up­per­hand on men's in­di­vid­ual plate win­ner Ryan Abra­ham (11-7, 5-11, 11-9, 11-3) in the fi­nal game but, the con­so­la­tion win came too late as T&T ad­vanced to the next round. The Ba­jan men made up for this lost how­ev­er, with a 4-1 trounc­ing over 2011 run­ner-up Ja­maica in their sec­ond group match. In group "B", de­fend­ing men's team cham­pi­ons Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Caribbean East­ern States (OECS), start­ed their bid in re­tain­ing their ti­tle with a 3-2 vic­to­ries over Bermu­da and Venezuela. Al­so cruis­ing over Venezuela was Guyana who dis­card­ed the team 5-0. Al­though they fought to the very last, T&T's women's team could not get past de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos in their match un­for­tu­nate­ly go­ing down 3-2.

De­spite the loss, T&T's Ker­rie Sam­ple still man­aged to cre­ate an up­set, de­feat­ing women's open in­di­vid­ual sec­ond place fin­ish­er, Karen Meakins, 3-0 in their match. The oth­er women's match saw Guyana take a 4-1 vic­to­ry over Ja­maica.