McQueenie Cup – April 26-27,
2019
It’s one of my favorite weekends of the year. The McQueenie
Cup is an annual team event that is played amongst mid-West clubs, and to make
it so much more enjoyable, is generally played at the University Club of
Chicago. There are positives and negatives to that. Awesome that it’s in
Chicago. Crappy that we have somehow get there. Awesome that it’s in Chicago.
Crappy that our hosts have the home court advantage and their best players are
usually available. Awesome that it’s in Chicago. Crappy that it is somewhat
difficult for us to get a full 8 man team together – a requirement if we essentially
want to win the thing for a change. Awesome. Because. It’s. In. Chicago.
The format is simple enough. Each club provides 8 players –
two A’s, two B’s, two C’s and two D’s. They play against the other players of
the same level from the opposing clubs. The club whose player’s perform the
best overall, would be declared the winner (in the case this year, each match
was 3 games to 11; each game won was worth 1 point). The 2019 event had 3
competing clubs: U Club of Chicago (UCC), Toledo, and the DAC. Each player
would get 4 matches.
Not counting last year when we hosted the event and therefore
it was easy enough to put together a full team, for the first time since 2013
(!!), the DAC managed to fill the 8 man squad. That’s an achievement in itself.
I do have to admit that it is considerably frustrating the difficulty we seem
to have to find ‘A’ players that are willing to travel. It may sound like I am
picking on that group (well… I am) but we do not have any trouble filling the
spots in the other levels. In fact, we usually get more players willing to go
that is needed. For some reason, the A players have little to no interest. We
did have a full team this year, but our two ‘A’ players were in reality ‘B’s
and were willing to step up in order for us to compete. A big ‘thank you’ to Colin Bayer and Greg Allare for their sacrifice.
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| Colin?? |
Colin actually went above and beyond the call of duty. He
sustained a rather nasty injury on his left hand just the weekend before and it
would have been more than understandable if had decided not to play. But he is
a trooper. He rubbed some dirt on it, sucked it up and battled through.
Although, he has now earned the nickname “Buster” (Arrested Development) which
is of course hilarious.
I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of success from our ‘A’
players, it was going to be tough going for them against the super-duper-mega-strongmen
from the U Club of Chicago (2019 DAC Classic Doubles A winners Zac Archer and Dave Adams) and the formidable dynamic duo from Toledo, Rich “Stretch-Armstrong”
Effler and Audrey “No-one-Puts-Baby-In-A-Corner” Berling.
However, Colin came out of the gates like a house on fire in
his first game against Zac, who had no idea what hit him. Using the frame of
his racquet to perfection, Colin hit a handful of unwitting winners leaving Zac
wide-eyed and in awe… and me cleaning my ears out after I heard Colin had won
the first game. It was true. One game into the competition and the DAC was in
the lead. It was our one genuine moment of glory. A very short moment, but we
lived it.
Zac settled in rather comfortably after that and wasn’t
going to let Colin anywhere near a game point again. But we had struck a blow,
and it was sweet! For the rest of the weekend, Greg and Colin put it all out
there. Between them they won 3 games, which was very pleasing and I was thought
they performed admirably. The matches against the Toledo pair were a lot closer
and they truly could have picked up a win with a little more luck. Both of them
should realize even more now how important consistent length is!
Playing in the B level for us was Brien Baker and David de la
Torre. Dave had a pretty typical M.O. for all of his matches: Win the first
game, take a decent lead into the end of the second, fight as hard as one can
to avoid a heart-attack and keep the lungs in the inside of the body, see
stars, lose 2 games to 1. Agonizing. He gets an A+ for effort, and with a
fraction more fitness he probably could have won 3 or the 4 matches. (The one
kid – junior - from the UCC was too good). He did get the one win, but had
multiple opportunities in the other two with game balls but just couldn’t convert.
Brien’s M.O. wasn’t as drastic. He had a couple of very tough outings, battled
with his usual attacking boast (although not quite as regularly as what I
expected) and his T-line short volley which proved to be irritatingly effective
if you were his opponent. He ended up with three 1-2 losses and one 0-3 loss (again, no one
could touch the UCC youngster!), we couldn’t have demanded more from him.
John Rogers and Ian Edwards took to the C level. Ian
has had a reasonably strong season at the DAC this year and looked to be
heading into Chicago with decent form. Unfortunately, that form somewhat
abandoned him for the weekend and he did struggle to find his line and length.
Not through lack of effort, but it just wasn’t happening for him. I’m not
suggesting the results would have been different had he been playing to the
level he is capable of, but the results absolutely could have been different. John on the other hand had the opposite
M.O. to David de la Torre… Play the
first game as if squash is a foreign entity, shake it off at the break, play
normal in the second game and win it, get faster and fitter for the third game
and crush the opponent, don’t stop smiling the entire way. John won all
matches, and by the end of each one, was bouncing around the court like a 5
year old waiting for an ice cream cone at the store, while his opponent was
dribbling (or crying, difficult to tell which) with wobbly knees searching
desperately for a piece of floor to collapse onto.
John’s brother Jeff
Rogers played in the D’s and just like brother John, Jeff just wants to
run, run, run. Does he ever get tired? I don’t know. Impossible to tell.
Probably not. Jeff’s opponents were also exasperated at the endless energy,
which only seemed to increase the
longer the matches went. Must be something in the water at the Roger’s
household… Jeff dropped a couple of games for the weekend, a couple of his
matches were actually very competitive. He kept cool though… does he ever get
ruffled? Probably not either. That of course helps tremendously when under
pressure one can keep their wits about them. Three of 4 wins, Jeff earned his
stripes. Brian Ellison was the
second D player and had himself a grand weekend. I expected him to do well and
he didn’t disappoint. Four for four,
Brian dropped one game for which he was bitterly dissatisfied with and was
(needlessly!) kicking himself for all weekend. (It didn’t change the final
outcome!) But his intense play, determination on every rally, the occasional entertaining dive (notice I didn’t call
it ‘graceful’) which always makes me
wince since he does wear that knee brace and it can’t always end up good
(right?), Brian muscled his way through taking top honors in his division.
From the get go, it was clear the DAC were not going to end
up with the McQueenie Cup trophy. With the team that we had – a team that
represented marvelously, fought valiantly from start to finish – without
players that can compete to win in the A draw, there is no chance of victory.
UCC won the event convincingly, over 20 points ahead of Toledo, where we ended
up a proud third, just 6 points back. Congratulations to Chicago for another
notch on their McQueenie Cup belt, and well done to Toledo who have now beaten
us for the 9th straight episode. Thankfully, John Seidel was not present to rub it in. He is recovering from hip
surgery and we all wish a full and quick recovery. We’ll get you next year!
Applause to the UCC itself and the organizer John Flanigan. I am truly grateful that
he hosts, it’s a splendid club and the weekend went off flawlessly (we expect
nothing less from John!), they treated us far better than what we deserve.
Although, I do expect he does a better job with the weather. It snowed all day Saturday whilst we were
there. Snow!
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| Me, Ian Edwards, Jeff Rogers, John Rogers, Greg Allare, Colin Bayer, David de la Torre, Brien Baker, Brian Ellison |
And to our DAC team. Road trips such as these only
strengthen the DAC squash family bond. Despite not winning the squash, once
again we absolutely killed it off the court. This year, there was some restraint
exhibited on the Friday night (which paid off for their Saturday squash!), and
for the Saturday night we let our hair down (not me, I hardly have any),
celebrated our awesomeness with high fives and fist pumps, punished our
digestive systems with non-essential nutrients, and we all regretted it the
morning… or not.
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