Essex Squash 57 Inter County Report

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Squash57 Inter-County Championships 2019
On June 8th/9th the Inter-County Squash57 Championships were held in Nottingham with 3 titles up for grabs: Open; Women’s Open; O50’s. Essex, along with Yorkshire and Buckinghamshire, were represented in all three categories.
The Essex Women’s team, captained by Zoe Fennell, was a relatively junior team with Stefania Sidoli and Mel Doughty who combined had played about 10 hours of sq57 in the past 10 years. Zoe won all her matches convincingly earning the team a worthy bronze medal position.

The Essex Open team, captained by Danny Weights, had been plagued by injuries in the build-up and then again on the weekend itself. The starting line-up was Joe Blackmur, Danny Weights, Dave McKenna, Adam Grilli & Ryan Cochrane but it wasn’t long before Pascual Dibattista was required to help out. The team had the toughest of starts losing to Devon 0-5 but then regrouped and beat Wiltshire 4-1 in their second match. Devon ultimately went on to win Sunday’s final 5-0 against Dorset. There were a number of past and present stars on show including Tim Vail, Mike Harris, Fiona Moverley & Mike Gregory so the standard of play could not have been higher.

The Essex O50’s team, captained by Patrick Osborn, was selected from a deep pool of talent and the o50’s ws the only category to include doubles as well as singles. The chosen line-up was: Patrick Osborn; Marc Thornley; Fred Cooke; Pascual Dibattista & Paul Fennell. Neighbouring county Kent was a good warm up event on Saturday morning after the long journey up to Nottingham through driving rain. Next up was a strong Norfolk side, a match that could have gone either way but Essex won the tie 3-1. Losing a singles to Norfolk focused the team for Sunday when Essex beat Devon 3-1 in their semi-final against before going on to beat Bucks 4-0 in the final where 3 of the 4 matches were won by the deciding game.

A huge thank you to all involved in the journey which started with the Essex Closed and ran through to the ICC Championships, not least of all to: Karakal (www.karkal.com) who supplied the team shirts: Reflex International (www.reflexinternational.com) who printed the shirts; Essex Squash who paid our team entry fees! The Inter-County Championships details can be found here: http://www.uk-racketball.com/e4—inter-county-championship—8th9th-jun…

What’s next? The Squash57 Singles Nationals at Edgbaston Priory on July 6th & 7th

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