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.

BY THE PAINT OF OUR SQUASH RACQUETS

 Cross Border Challenge - September 8, 2018

I felt it was a little early in the season to run this event, but every year it seems more difficult to find dates that suit both the DAC and Windsor schedules. The Saturday after Labor Day was always going to be iffy… kids are back at school, the summer is almost over, everybody is trying — grudgingly — to adjust to the hectic fall and winter that will no doubt make us wish it was already May once more.

Signups trickled in and eventually we did rustle up enough enthusiastic brave-hearts to defend our Cross Border Challenge title - a purposely beat up, trashed trophy that we have been proudly displaying in our court area for the past 2 years. Fourteen members in all, spread out over 11 singles and 3 doubles matches and as it turned out, it was the closest result between the 2 clubs ever - and we have been running this competition since 2005.

Tom MacEachern and Ryan Guthrie

The DAC got on the board early with Tom MacEachern. His opponent was a young man / lad / boy / junior / whippersnapper who we found out was 18 but seriously I thought was barely out of primary school. I guess when you get to my age, anybody under the age of 25 suddenly appears to me as a wee child that hasn’t yet graduated to the front passenger seat of their parent's car. Ryan Guthrie had a smooth technique, and was pretty darn quick. Not exactly carrying a lot of extra meat on him, I am sure that without his squash shoes on, he may have floated to the ceiling. Tom hung tough though, and was the steadier of the two, executed some rather impressive pick-ups of his own and out-lasted Ryan for a 3-0 win.

Colin Bayer, all the while, was battling it out against Ron Funkenhuaser two courts down and struggled. Appearing to be a little out of sync, Colin was a mixed bag of some accomplished squash and some… let’s say “questionable” decisions. With up and down form - sometimes in the same rally - it of course makes it awkward to gain any sort of momentum. The match went to 5, Ron proved to be the more dependable of the pair on the day and took the win to kick off Windsor’s campaign.

And so the trend for the singles matches was set. Keeping to the script, neither club could assert themselves with any authority. We would win a couple, Windsor would win a couple.

Jeff Frost and Trevor Charles

Only 2 other matches went to 5. Jeff Frost had a great start to his contest taking the first 2 games against Trevor Charles, an opponent who couldn’t decide whether he was right handed or left handed. Then the wheels fell off a little. Jeff, in his ultimate wisdom, somehow managed to smack himself in the funny bone of his left arm with his own racquet which threw him completely sideways. Maybe the numbness reached the co-ordination nodes of his brain, and the 4th game was over before he could sneeze, missing a handful of serves and looking totally dazed. Fortunately, sanity (and feeling) returned for the 5th and Jeff pulled out the 11-8 win, now able to actually laugh at his mishap.

Jay Bonahoom had the unenviable task of playing against the Windsor pro Dave Morrish. Like (just about) all pros, Dave has pretty acceptable racquet skills. If the ball is loose, if you give him time, and even if you don’t, Dave has the ability (go figure) to punish you. He has a great touch, can be awfully deceptive, knows what shot you are hitting even before you step on court for the warm-up, and has years of experience to boot. None of that perturbed Jay it seems. He did a phenomenal job. The one thing that Jay did have on Dave was movement and Jay ran his behind off, forced Dave short often, and took advantage well of open court opportunities. Stretching the veteran pro to 5 games, I did still think - even at 8-all - that Dave was in the driver’s seat based mainly on that experience. And it was the case. Some subtle holds, clever flicks, and the match was suddenly over. But Jay should be very happy with his performance.

From the 11 singles matches we had won 5 of them. It would come down to the doubles.

The first doubles match of the day featured our own veteran (non-pro) John-please-don’t-make-me-hit-a-backhand-Dunwoody and one of our newest additions to the club Max Franklin, a top flight club extraordinaire. They had a tough task against hard hitting Paul Gebrael and Dave Morrish, an imposing combination of brute force and deft touch. Dave is also a lefty, so they were dealing with 2 forehands here. John and Max had their chances. They had glory in the palm of their hands before they fumbled it and let it slip away. One sniff of that prestige was all it took for them to choke on the fumes. The opportunity came at 2-1 up and 14-all in the 4th… a solitary match-ball that was there for the taking but turned out never to be. The 5th game was close but they couldn’t recover as they went own 15-11. Oh well, nothing a beer or two couldn’t solve!

Ian "'Murica!" Edwards and Rich Routley

2 matches left - we had to win them both. First up was Ian Edwards and Bruce Shaw against Carlyle D’Souza and Trevor Charles. And this match could not have been closer. It was another tug-o-war type contest, game for us, game for them, neither team asserting themselves as dominate. Even as the 5th game stretched into the last few rallies, and Windsor held 3 match-balls at 14-12 (and in turn, Cross Border Challenge Title ball), Ian and Bruce somehow managed to frame a winner, squeak out the next point as well to set up the sudden death exchange… It was a short rally. Not an overly pretty rally. An “Oh!-I-hope-I-don’t-hit-the-tin” rally, when suddenly Carlyle hit the tin. And with that we avoided disaster.

Now it was up to Tom MacEachern and the human Nacho, David de la Torre. In their way was Ron Funkenhauser and Arnie Funkenhauser. Winner takes all. It was all on the line. And our boys stepped up big time. Both Tom and Dave have improved their doubles game considerably over the past 12 months and they made their point. Solid first game, was followed by a 15-14 win in the second - the only time in the match where they looked pressured. The third was a stream-rolling performance, it didn’t take long. A statement 3-0 win to finish the day and the DAC survived the closest Cross Border in the 13 year history.

Score? DAC - 7 matches, 27 games won. Windsor - 7 matches, 25 games won. We scraped in by 2 solitary games. Of course, many of our players claimed to be the one who pushed us over the top… Colin Bayer, Jay Bonahoom, even John Dunwoody was trying to make his case. But, as we all know, it was a team effort - every player contributed no matter how their score line ended up. I would like to thank all of our members who made the grandiose effort to play, and for the Windsor team and their pro Dave Morrish for their always extremely welcoming hospitality. We hope to get together again in April for the next episode… if our schedules can synchronize at all! For the record, this was the 21^st running of the event. Overall, Windsor hold an 11 to 10 lead.

Go DAC Team!

THE STRENGTH OF THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE

Cross Border Challenge - September 16, 2017

The one thing that I didn’t see much of this Saturday was the abundance of the Stars and Stripes, our players enveloping themselves in their patriotic colors as if the Old Glory had vomited all over them. There was the odd spattering of the red, white and blue, but nothing like we had a few years ago when a large percentage of the team actually purchased specific uniforms that were beyond reproach. It was beautiful. While our gear didn’t scream “U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!”, our racquets did.

A healthy crew of 24 DAC members were matched up against their Windsor counterparts - who, by the way, also lacked an appreciable amount of their national pride. Where were their faithful “Maple Leafs…?” - and at 2pm sharp matches were underway.

In probably the fastest recorded result in Cross Border history, before the players on court 7 had even warmed the ball up to match playing standard, Chris Laenen was standing next to me, beer in hand, reporting his 3-0 win. Well, that was a good start for us, although I did feel a little sympathy for his opponent…

… a quick side note here. Mis-matches are inevitable in a competition such as this (think “Farris Cup”!). I work together with Windsor’s head pro Graeme Williams and we try our hardest to make all the matches as even as possible. Unfortunately, it’s not possible. We do get it wrong on occasion. We had 21 matches played this day. I would prefer that one club win all 21 matches, but have every one of them go the full 5-set distance, than have an 11-10 match result but all scores being a 3-0 whitewash. I apologize to those few who were affected, but don’t be discouraged and we hope to see you back again…!

Josh Gershonowicz took a little more time than Chris, but he took all three games to hand us our second victory of the day. Then it was Ian Edwards’ turn, but his voyage to the finishing line was a whole lot harder. His opponent put up plenty of resistance but Ian held firm in the 5th to take the 3-2. Scott Beals was next in line and I thank him for stepping in last minute to replace Nacho de la Torre Libre who was called up for an out of state grappling bout somewhere down south. Scott’s opponent was also a last minute replacement and was up for double duty. Steve Allen had to go back-to-back so he really didn’t want to spend too much time on court with Scott and was pleased he got away with the 3-0 win before having to tackle Zac MacVoy immediately afterwards.

It was the closest match of the day, and a doozy. Looking at the protagonists, one would discern that Steve was the runner, Zac would need to be the shot maker. But Zac is remarkably mobile for a big dude, he impresses me every time he starts motoring around the court. I also hold my breath hoping he doesn’t run into (through) the glass back wall, and I also keep those two paddles nest to the trophy cabinet amped up just in case… Deep into the 5th game, getting into the business end of the tie-break, it was Steve who looked like the player in charge and Zac was simply trying to hang on. And Zac hung on for a while, saving a couple of match balls, but never actually getting a match ball of his own. Steve pulled out the 13-11 in the 5th win!

In the round of 2.45pm singles matches (which included Steve and Zac), the Windsor team stepped up and took three of the four results. Our lone victor was Mike Zukas. At this stage, the two clubs had split the singles results 4-4. So what about the 2 doubles matches up to that point?

We split them too. Shail Arora and Bruce Shaw were shaky at best, and struggled to find any consistency against the experienced husband and wife team of Janice and Herb Funkenhauser. Janice and Herb took full advantage and all three games. The other doubles match was a lot tighter, although it wasn’t exactly an epic encounter. John Dunwoody and Vikram Chopra started off their campaign like Shail and Bruce - all over the map. Mistakes and mis-hits seemed to be the norm for the first 2 games before the pair got their bearings on the proper track. The next three games went their way, a 3-2 win that they will be pleased just to get away with.

5 matches apiece.

There were 11 matches left, and it was at this point the DAC seemed to think enough was enough, time to bury this bad boy. The next round of matches all fell our way. Han Peng must have sweat out half his body weight after his 11-9 in the 5th win against a veteran, very British gentleman with an accent more fit for the Queen, who has been playing squash longer than I have. JC Tibbitts had to deal with another Funkenhauser (Ron) who spent a great deal of his time sprawled across the court floor as he continuously dived for ball after ball. Spectacular to watch, top-notch entertainment to say the least, but not a winning strategy. JC won 3-1. Ryan MacVoy kept to the simple patient tactic of good length before utilizing the short court well. A very nice 3-0 win for him.

Steve Brown also put up a commendable performance. The first game loss was due to forcing the ball too short too soon, so he changed that mentality for the next three games and was able to use those soft hands of his more effectively. A great 3-1 victory, celebrated with a cool energy drink… umm, I mean a scotch.

Donald Trump was wrong. He said once that he would win so much, we would get bored with winning. Winning never gets boring. Piling on the pain, we quickly put the day out of reach. Brian Ellison, Sante Fratarcangeli, David Zack, all won 3-0. The third doubles of the day - Chato Hill / Steve Murphy - walked off with a 3-1 triumph as well.

There were 2 matches to complete, but we had the 13-6 unassailable lead. That doesn’t meant the last two matches weren’t fiercely competed. Of course, that goes without saying when Paul Gebrael is involved. “Fierce” and “competition” are indiscernible in his case - an important quality for any squash player. Ryan Covell had the task of taming him and he did a pretty good job in the first game. Although I did fear a little for my life when I unwisely gave my opinion on a ‘let’ call / tin, that may have poked the bear a bit too much. Paul came out in the second game, started serving the ball with every intent of trying to make our front wall collapse, and increased the pressure on Ryan significantly. Paul took the next 3 games, and thankfully no humans were harmed in the process. I don’t mean to give Paul a hard time - he was the perfect sportsman, the match was played with no controversy all.

The final contest of the day was another 5-setter. Paul Ward hasn’t played a lot over the summer, but the rust didn’t appear to show that much. Doug Fields is an awkward leftie, effective with low hard angles, and can scurry around the court rather well. As the 5th game was under way, I felt that Paul held the upper hand with the comparative fitness levels and he did get off to the quicker start. There is nothing worse, I find, than to have a bad start in a 5th game. Catch-up when you are tired is a desperation situation and that - more times than not - doesn’t end well. And it didn’t for Doug. Paul maintained the healthy lead and took the match. We ended up a 14 match to 7 win.

Now, if was I paying attention a little more, I would have made a bigger deal that this was the 20th Cross Border Challenge between the 2 clubs. After our victory today, the overall score stands at DAC - 9, Windsor - 11. The next one is - for now - scheduled for April in Windsor, (if our calendars allow it). The trophy stays in our cabinet. Looks like a good home for it.