2016 Pan Am Junior Squash Championships: Day 7: Semi Finals / Finals

I'll start this post by saying that Team Canada Won 2 Bronze medals in the Team Competition. It was a long week of competition and many surprising changes at the event. An awesome week was had by all the players. New friends made and connection that will last a life time.

This morning both Canadian Teams were up against Team Mexico in the semi-final action.

The Boys: Canada vs Mexico

The order of play today was 1-3-2 (Julien, Brett, Noel)

Julien was the first to step on court with the Mexican #1 Leonel Cardenas. Leonel is a hard hitting beast of a Mexican squash player. If there was a weak link in their team we needed to exploit it right here. Sadly we were not able to open up with the first game. Julien did answer back with the second game and we were back in the running. Leonel did impress me with his court professionalism. He called the fewest lets I have seen from any of the players this weekend. Rather than letting the ref make the call he play the ball and surprised Julien, taking many points in this fashion. Kudos to Leonel and we were down 1-0 to Mexico.

Next on court was our Number 3's, Brett Schille vs Allan Nunez. Nunez won the first two games and ran Brett around the court working the diagonal with extreme efficiency. In the third Brett answered back using straighter shots giving the prancing Nunez less angles to work with. But the damage was done and Canada lost the second match to Mexico and the encounter 2-0.

Canadian Boys will bring home the Bronze!

The Girls Canada vs Mexico

Of all the encounters this morning this one went the distance! All 3 matches were played and the result of the last match decided who moved to the final.

Grace Thomas lead out the Canadian Team. This match was a 5 game match but should be considered a 6 game match with a score of 17-15 in the forth. Grace had match balls in the 4 but could not find the finishing punch to take the 4th game. In the end Grace lost the match in the 5th and Mexico had the 1-0 lead over Canada.

Rhea Dhar came to court for the second match of the encounter. It took her 2 games to find her rhythm on court but after losing the first 2 she clawed back to win the match 3-2 by stroke on match ball. The teams were now tied 1-1

Hanna Blatt would be on court next with the number 2 Mexican. All tied up and the winner of this match would move to the finals this afternoon with the US team. Mexico would not open the door even a crack. They efficiently did their job and as a result beat Canada 2-1 in the encounter.