Sh­er­nice Thomas

Col­in Ra­mas­ra fi­nal­ly broke out of his los­ing streak in per­fect time to hand T&T's men its sec­ond ever team ti­tle at the Caribbean Area Squash As­so­ci­a­tion (CASA) Cham­pi­onship which con­clud­ed on Sat­ur­day at the Cas­ca­dia Squash Club, St Ann's. The lo­cal men, who de­feat­ed over­all 2011 cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos and run­ner-up Ja­maica to fin­ish on top of group A, faced Guyana in the nail-bit­ing fi­nal. Na­tion­al boys' un­der-19 cham­pi­on, Man­dela Patrick, opened the game with a beau­ti­ful straight-set win over De­ja Di­az (11-5, 11-4, 11-5). But Ju­lian Chin got the bet­ter of Ryan Abra­ham (10-12, 11-9, 11-5, 11-8) to claim one point for Guyana. Reign­ing na­tion­al men's cham­pi­on, Josh Pinard, then stepped up to the plate and seemed to have com­mand over his op­po­nent, Richard Chin, who he beat 11-6, 11-8, to win the first two sets. But just when it seemed like T&T would re-gain the lead, the Guyanese bounced back 11-4, 11-5, 12-10 to put his coun­try back in con­tention.

Guyana's lead was short-lived how­ev­er, as Kale Wil­son had oth­er plans when he faced Ja­son Cal­len­der in an­oth­er fierce bat­tle. Wil­son bounced back from a 9-11 first set de­feat to take the sec­ond 11-9, on­ly to have Cal­len­der snatch the third 12-10. But Wil­son, the 2010 un­der-19 CASA champ, pre­vailed 11-1, 11-9, to lock the scores 2-2. With the scores lev­eled, all eyes were on Ra­mas­ra to see if he could bring the host na­tion its long-await­ed vic­to­ry. Hav­ing had a rough lo­cal sea­son so far in los­ing his na­tion­al crown and be­ing boot­ed out in the third round in­di­vid­ual tour­na­ment of the cham­pi­onships, there was an el­e­ment of doubt sur­round­ing Ra­mas­ra's abil­i­ties. But Ra­mas­ra showed every­one that he was not to be count­ed out just yet, with a 3-0 (11-4, 11-4, 11-3) sweep over Alex Ar­joon. De­fend­ing men's cham­pi­ons Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the East­ern Caribbean States (OECS), could not even fin­ish in the top three as they were beat­en by Bar­ba­dos 4-1 in the third place play-off.

The lo­cal vet­er­ans' then sought to cap­ture T&T's sec­ond team ti­tle of the tour­ney when they faced de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos. In the end, it was the Ba­jans who would re­tain their ti­tle with a 3-2 clinch. T&T's points came from John Hol­ley (over-50) and Richard Hart (over-60) who got the up­per hand on Nigel Grif­fith (12-10, 8-11, 8-11, 11-7, 11-9) and Leon Truss (11-6, 11-7, 11-4) re­spec­tive­ly. The Ba­jans al­so beat Guyana 4-1 to de­fend their women's team ti­tle. T&T women's team of Ker­rie Sam­ple, Rhea Khan, Jes­si­ca Scott, Joan­na Au­gus­tus and Char­lotte Knag­gs, placed third in when they trounced Ja­maica 5-0 on Thurs­day. For their suc­cess in the team cham­pi­onships, Bar­ba­dos was again de­clared the over­all cham­pi­ons for the sec­ond time in a row with a to­tal of 26 points. T&T trailed be­hind by just two points to place sec­ond fol­lowed by Guyana (20).

RE­SULTS

Coun­try Women Men Vet­er­ans To­tal Po­si­tion

Bar­ba­dos 10 6 10 26 1st

T&T 6 10 8 24 2nd

Guyana 8 8 4 20 3rd

Ja­maica 5 4 5 14 4th

OECS 0 5 6 11 5th

Bermu­da 0 3 0 3 6th

Venezuela 0 2 0 2 7th