Guyana to host 2019 senior squash tournament - Fernandes pleased with the Senior Team showing in 2018
The 2019 Senior Caribbean Area Squash Association (CASA) tournament will be held in Georgetown, Guyana during the summer.
This revelation was made by the President of the Guyana Squash Association (GSA), David Fernandes to Stabroek Sports during a recent interview.
“Next year we host the Senior CASA here [Georgetown] in August, and then we go to the Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru,” Fernandes said of Guyana’s significant events in the coming year.
The Senior CASA tournament, which was last played in Guyana five years ago, will see the Guyanese pulling out all the stops to recapture the senior overall event they last won in Georgetown.
Fernandes in that regard was positive that Guyana’s squad would include the likes of Alex Arjoon, Guyana’s number one seeded player, who in recent time, has been reluctant to participate in away tournaments due to personal commitments.
The president is also hoping to lure a few retired world-rated players back out on the court to boost the local’s chances of capturing the overall title.
“He will play,” Fernandes confidently said of Arjoon’s participation.
“Our Guyanese team is at its strongest whenever we host. So, I think we will probably have a full veterans team as well which is always a bit of a problem when you want to win the overall title. Because last year we won both the men’s and women’s category, but we still didn’t win the overall title because we didn’t have the largest contingent of vets,” he explained.
“I think that next year everyone will want to play and I think we could win the overall, the men’s and we could win the women’s. However, I think it would be tough for us to win the men’s individual but the women’s individual is not impossible, but our players will have to improve a bit to beat Megan Bess (Barbados).”
Recapping the year of the seniors now the season has ended after the conclusion of the Lucozade Handicap tournament, Fernandes expressed his satisfaction with the way the team fared in 2018, particularly lauding the efforts of Taylor Fernandes and Ashley Khalil who captured Guyana’s lone medal in this year’s Central American and Caribbean (CAC) games in the doubles squash event a few months back in Colombia.
“The senior team did very well in 2018. I think we were the only team in CAC to win a medal; we had a medal in the women’s doubles which was very good for us, and we are very proud of that accomplishment. And then they went to Pan Am qualifiers, and with the help of Nicolette [Fernandes], they were able to qualify,” he highlighted when asked about the most significant achievements of the senior players and association in 2018.