Guyana captures overall team title

Guyana’s squash teams captured the overall team title when the curtain came down on the 2008 Cellink Plus Southern Caribbean Senior Squash championships Saturday night at the Georgetown Club courts.

Guyana narrowly edged Barbados on statistics after both teams accumulated 26 points in the team events.

The two-way tie in points surfaced after Barbados defeated Guyana 3-2 to claim the women’s team title.

With that victory, Barbados would have captured two of the three titles in the team event, the men’s team title which gave them 10 points, and the women’s team title for an additional 10 points.

They also gained six points for placing third in the veterans’ team events.

Consistency put Guyana on par with Barbados after the men’s and women’s teams placed second to Barbados in the team events while the Guyana team convincingly won the veterans’ category for 10 points.

However, Guyana was adjudged overall winner since they won six ties to Barbados’ four.

Guyana’s victory was aided by Barbados’ surprise 2-3 defeat to Trinidad and Tobago on the final day of competition.

Trinidad’s Colin Ramasra upset Shawn Simpson in five games 1/9, 9/1, 3/9, 9/3 and 9/0 to avenge his 3-0 loss to Simpson in the men’s individual final.

President of the Guyana Squash Association (GSA) Ronald Burch-Smith, said that he was very pleased with the work that the association had done to successfully host the tournament.

“The tournament was a great success not only from the organizing stand point, but there was a good quality of squash in all of the matches,” Burch-Smith said.

“It helped some of our young players get exposed to a high quality of squash from some of the top players in the region.

“I was also heartened by the willingness of the veterans’ Louis Narain, Selouchinie Fung-A-Fat and Denise Jeffrey, to participate despite being absent from competitive squash for such a long time.

“The same is expressed to the overseas-based players, Alwyn Callender, Brendon Mounter, Robert Mac David who took time out of their schedules to come home and participate.”

The final placings are Guyana, Barbados, Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.