WINDSOR’S DASTARDLY TACTICS!

Cross Border Challenge - September 14, 2019

Continuing on with the Cross Border Challenge tradition, this would be its 22nd chapter! The Windsor Squash Club and the DAC have been sharing the spoils pretty evenly since its inception in 2005. The trends are usually streaky. At one time Windsor won 7 times in a row, the best we have managed is 4. Before the start of last Saturday’s episode, we were on a win streak of 3 and a 4th would have been not just dandy (I mean, who likes to lose?) but it would have also tied up the overall standings. Windsor have won 11 times, the DAC, 10.

To break that winning streak, Windsor decided to change the look of their lineup somewhat. Throw us off our game, make us feel… old. Especially since it was the start of the season, a decent chunk of our players were still rubbing the summer out of their eyes, barely able to remember that you are supposed to actually run after you hit the black ball and not stand there looking up to the sky trying to track the white one, forgetting the pain associated with a heart rate above 80. The nerve! Sending us opponents that don’t understand what the word “tired” means, or “chiropractor”, or “defibrillator”… opponents that were born in this century! Yes! I am talking about juniors! Aaarrrggghhh! The horror!

Okay, they weren’t all juniors. Only a third of their singles matches (5) featured these awful scary adversaries. Just ask Jay Bonahoom. Or Derek Aguirre. Or Steve Brown. (It was great to have Steve back in the club - he made his way from St. Louis to join us this weekend… not sure he regretted it after the match though!). Neither of our guys could pick up a game against their youthful counterparts. (Although Steve did have 2 games balls in his second game.) One would think that experience would be a helpful advantage, and it can be. But, these kids can play. And run. And lunge. And run some more. And hit a hard ball. And hit an accurate ball. And run. And by this time, it’s only half way through the first game and out guys are searching desperately for the lung they have already coughed up. And for the keg outside court 5.

And that wasn’t the worst of it. Vikram Chopra was also a victim of this adolescent onslaught. We all know Vikram as one of the hardest hitters in our club, and even he was surprised at the power of his combatant, Amin Khan. Some of you may remember Amin from Windsor as a small 10 or 11 year old - who was decent enough back then - the kid with the 2-handed backhand. He was knee-high to a smurf in those days, now he’s taller than me, has (thankfully) moved on from the double-handed technique, showed us just how skillful he can be as he slotted some eye-popping winners on his way to a 3-1 victory over Vikram. Impressive. Not sure he broke a sweat.

Vishaal Mehta and Bashar Fakhoury

They had one more junior on the roster - Vishaal Mehta. However, we had countered this fresh-faced move with one of our own. Bashar Fakhoury is one of our up and coming 14 year olds, working very hard on his game and starting to rise up through the US junior rankings. He’s had a great summer and keen to make an assault on the tournament season just around the corner. It was a great match. Vishaal is one cool customer. Smooth mover, long reach. Bashar like to step up and attack, take the volley. Vishaal’s steadiness in the end proved the difference, taking the match in a tight 3-1. Just a little more patience was required on Bashar’s part, but his game is coming together nicely.

Tony Sorgi and Jeff Patterson

So once their juniors had their way with us, we were left to pick up the pieces. The rest of the matches ended up pretty evenly. Windsor still won them 8 matches to 6, but the results were a lot closer. In the tightest contest of the day, Tony Sorgi probably experienced the longest match of his life against Jeff Patterson. It was difficult to tell which one of them was hurting more, they were both sucking wind so hard, the walls were bending inwards. Blow for blow, in the end, Tony crawled off first with the 11-9 in the 5th victory, Jeff right behind him, as they barely managed to hoist themselves to the bench where I then forced them to stand up again for this photo. I am sure those smiles took a lot of effort.

Brian Ellison also suffered through a 5-set match against Shabaz Salem, but unfortunately for the DAC, we were on the wrong end of this one. It was Brian’s first match for a while, so even though I am sure he would be disappointed for not pulling out the win, and his body no doubt would be screaming at him the following morning, it was actually a pretty respectable effort.

Brian’s partner in crime - James Van Dyke - also went down in five games, but it could have very easily been a 3-0 victory. He carried a 2 games to love lead over Dean Lansens, and was only a couple points off closing it out in the third set tie-break. But the failure to convert gave Dean the boost he needed, and James’ balloon popped. He couldn’t keep up the pace and Dean ran away with it for a 5 set (fitness) win!

The 4th 5-setter of the day belonged to David de la Nacho-Guapo-Chapo-Torre. Taking on the stubborn lefty in Doug Fields, it was a match that was played upstairs so I didn’t see any of it. I am sure it was another heroic saga that should be forever etched into the chronicles of squash legends history, as Dave’s intrepid skill-set had him getting to the winner’s tape first. Either that, or it was his ‘smash-it-at-all-costs-low-and-hard’ racquetball strategy. Whatever works, right? Win is a win.

Ryan, Vikram, Kevin, Steve

Our other singles winners on the day belonged to Chuck Doyle (3-1), Han Peng (3-1) and Matt Paradiso (3-0). The victories were few and far between for the DAC, Windsor piled it on us. The doubles matches were much of the same.

We did take the first doubles match of the day, however. Vikram Chopra and Ryan Covell took just over an hour to overcome the hard hitting Kevin Furmanek and leg speed of Steve Allen in 4 games. I didn’t see much of the match but it did appear Vikram and Ryan were playing the eye-formation? You don’t see that a lot, but apparently (if they did that for the whole match), it paid off. There wasn’t much joy in the other 3 doubles contests. Joey Gaylord and John Dunwoody picked up one game, as did Justin Winkelman and Bruce Shaw. The excuses came thick and fast… rustiness… beer… they cheated… it was Saturday… they made me play a backhand… my partner… All valid I am sure (cough, cough).

At the end of the body count, it was Windsor 13… DAC 6. The trophy will be in its new home until the next time which will most likely be next September. We have a year to get young. I suppose the silver lining is that none of their juniors can (yet) drink the beer. So more for us adults. Small consolation, on a day like this, but we won the keg. We’ll take what we can.

ONE HOT, LAZY SUMMER

2019 Summer League Breakdown

Don’t take it that I am accusing you of being lazy, I am sure you all kept yourself brimming with activity through this sweltering hot summer, right? Just not particularly on the squash courts… I myself spent a couple of weeks down south this year and experienced first-hand what 100+ degrees with high humidity can do to the psyche, liquefy your inner organs, char the outer ones, and consider that the greatest human that ever lived in the history of this planet was the one that invented air conditioning. Playing squash on those days was not overly high on my wish list.

Play was down across the board for the summer, which I hope is only a small glitch in the matrix. If all goes to plan, by the time you are reading this, our new squash pro has arrived, is up and running, and is already making a positive effect on the usage totals. But, it wouldn’t be normal if a meticulously laid strategy went exactly as we expect it to, so naturally our new squash pro isn’t yet here as we have no choice but to wait for his visa papers to come through. Nothing like governmental red tape! Of course, none of this can change the stats of the 2019 summer leagues which were, regrettably to say, not the prettiest we have seen…

Let’s start with the doubles league that ran for 11 weeks (or just 10 for the Monday crowd as that had the Memorial Day holiday). Registrations have been holding steady over the past 4 years. We had 47 this summer, the same as 2016 and 2017. Last year had 48. But, the distribution of the players allowed us to add on an extra hour of play for the Tuesday group. Summer doubles is tougher to run, we do get more late cancellations, and there is simply less interest in subbing. The numbers don’t lie:

• There were 77 matches scheduled across the 4 levels. 67 of those matches were played, or 87%. Last summer, we had 93.75% of matches completed.
• Of the 10 matches not played, 7 were due to not being able to secure a sub, 2 were no-shows, and 1 of the matches vowed to rearrange the match time and (not surprisingly) never got around to doing that.
• The Wednesday C group were the worst offenders this summer. Of the 11 matches, only 6 were played. No one reached the 5 match minimum threshold to qualify for the best average for the season. They only managed to play 1 match out of the last 5 weeks. This is the complete opposite of the 2018 season where they were the most committed.
• Monday A group only had 1 match not completed. They required a sub 29% of the time. (Not terrible, but not great either). 4 of the 20 matches did not require any subs. Nine of the 19 matches played were 3-0. 
• Tuesday B group had 19 players (record number for the summer) so we added a 4pm time slot. Four matches from the 33 scheduled were not played. Three of those were at the 4pm time slot (!!) because we no one was willing to sub in. Only one 4pm match didn’t need any subs at all. Four 5pm matches didn’t need any subs, and all but one 6pm match needed at least one sub. Overall, a sub was required 36% of the time. 51% of the match played ended up 3-0. 
• The Wednesday Open group had the least amount of registrations (7), but completed all of their matches. They were the most responsive to sub, even though they required the most – 48% of the time. (Very high!). Every match required at least 1 sub, 8 of the 11 matches required at least 2. Only 2 of the matches ended up 3-0, so it was the most competitive group of the summer by far.
• On an individual level, Shail Arora (Monday A) played the most – 14 matches. He obviously ended up with the most points overall (52). Bruce Shaw (Tuesday B) was the next most active with 10 matches. Four other players had 9.
• 28 players played the 5 match minimum to qualify for the best average. That’s 59.5% of the league. That means that 40% of the league played less than what they were scheduled. Kyle Keppen (Tuesday B) had the best average of the summer with 5.60 points per match.

Looking to the singles league, the numbers in comparison to 2018 were not even close. In fact, they were down from 2017 as well. Given, we did have only 90 players this year, 10 less than the previous 2 seasons.

Summer soldiers Paul Gormley and Jon Diewald

• Only 445 matches were played this summer. Waaay down from the 636 in 2018 and still significantly lower than the 502 in 2017. I do not know what caused this.
• The “Court Junkies” easily played the most matches of all the teams with 130, making up 29% of the overall total. Sounds like a lot but the best team in 2018 played 224 matches (!). 
• Paul Gormley played 59 of those 130 matches. He also played everyone on his team at least 3 times.
• Paul Gormley obviously also scored the most points of anyone in the league with 277.
• The next best team was “Backhanded Compliments” with 60 completed matches.
• The “Sultans of Swing” played the least amount of matches with 20. That’s actually not too bad considering the worst team last summer played only 6.
• Six players did not play any matches at all. Smh. There were 16 last year, so this is an improvement, but this seriously should be zero.
• The summer league is 16 weeks long. The 15^th week produced the fewest matches with just 7. 
• The 4^th week was the most productive with 44 matches.
• Three teams did not play a single match in the final three weeks.
• The pair that played the most? That honor goes to Adam McDowell and Andrew Miller of the “Sweetspots”. Of their 15 matches, Adam won 12 of them.

 So there you have it. Another summer league behind us, another school year starting today, and another squash season bearing down upon us with either giddy excitement or anxious trepidation depending on which side of the argument you feel you are on. Congratulations to the summer soldiers who kept belting that rubber ball through the hot months, you will all be grateful once we get things cranking very soon!