-National Squash Coach Carl Ince gives the secrets to Guyana’s dominant year at the CASA Caribbean Junior Championships
By Kiev Chesney
The Guyana Junior Squash team was clearly the most successful team at the 2008 Caribbean Squash Area Caribbean Junior Champion-ships having captured the most individual titles and winning both male and female team events to convincingly wrap up their 16th overall title.
In the girls’ singles events, Mary Fung-A-Fat, Victoria Arjoon and Keisha Jeffrey claimed individual titles, but that was not all.
Debutant at the tournament Ashley deGroot was the runner to Fung-A-Fat, in the girls under 15 category, Kayla Jeffrey also forced an all Guyanese family affair under girls 17 final while Daina King placed third in the highly competitive under 19.
Although none of the boys was able to win individual titles they were able to upset number one seed Trinidad and Tobago in the semifinal of the boys’ team event before beating Bermuda at home to win the male team event to end a two-year drought despite the absence of a key player.
But one important piece of the puzzle, which enabled Guyana to make it sweet 16 was the experience and expertise of Level IV Elite Coach Carl Ince.
Of his 10 appearances at the tournament, he has coached teams to seven overall titles and this is the second year that his teams’ have managed to win both the boys and girls team event.
In an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday Ince said that he was elated with the performances of each of the players at the regional tournament and said that the victories were very deserving after hard work.
Ince said that the recipe for the team’s success was: “Hard work and determination, devotion to the game, good management and back-up coaching, parental support, player-coach chemistry and adequate preparation.”
Explaining the recipe Ince said, “We started preparing for the event very early this year and it showed as they were the fittest team in the tournament and that was because we did a lot of aerobic and anaerobic work before we actually did on court training.
“All of the players were ready and willing to work towards their goal and none of them backed down from whatever challenge the training put to them,” he said.
The next secret he said was “Good management and back-up coaching from Robert Fernandes who accompanied us at this event for the first time. I think that having Robert there was a great asset because he was able to assist me and share his experience both as a former player and as a coach.”
Ince added:“The parental support was also a helping factor as most of the parents who accompanied the team provided support and helped players to be free of emotions such as fear and anxiety, basically almost as thought they were playing at home with their parents’ right by their sides.” Ince said that he had been worried a bit when he learnt that 2007 under-15 girls’ champion Ashley Khalil and her younger brother Jason-Ray, had opted out of participation at the last minute.
“I was a bit concerned when I learnt that Jason and Ashley would not be participating. I knew that the twins would have been able to make up for Ashley’s absence but I knew it would be tough without Jason,” he said.
Ince said that according to his observation, Jason-Ray Khalil would have been the clear victor of the boys’ under-15 category.
However, Ince said that he was impressed with the play of Abhishek Singh who originally was only competing in the individual category.
Ince said that although Khalil is a better player, Singh was able to hold his own and play good enough squash to help the boys capture the team title.
Ince also said that the level of play of the girls’ team was exceptionally high, with Fung-A-Fat, Arjoon and the Jeffrey twins totally dominating their categories.