Caribbean Under 15 and national junior squash champion Shomari Wiltshire recently captured his maiden US squash title after competing in two tournaments in the United States of America.
The young squash sensation participated in two junior championships earning his self a well-deserved crown in the process.
The first-weekend Wiltshire participated in the Berwyn Summer Silver in Pennsylvania. That tournament was used as a warm-up for the following weekend where he entered in the Boys Under 17 category. He won his first match, defeating Atreyus Bhavsar 11 – 9, 11 – 7, 11 – 1 but then lost to Nolan Gelinas 10 – 12, 3 – 11, 13 – 11, 6 – 11 in the second round.
This lost resulted in his going into the consolation tournament where he then downed Sean Roundtree in his first match 11 – 2, 11 – 4, 11 – 6. In the next round, he defeated John Gunton 11 – 1, 11 -4, 11 – 3 and then in the semifinals he defeated Matthew Wang 11 – 6, 11 – 2, 11 – 2 before losing in the finals of the consolation draw to Neil Bam in straight games 9 – 11, 4 – 11, 8 – 11.
The Finger Lakes Gold was held in Clinton, New York at the Hamilton College. This was a gold tournament but because Shomari has no US ranking he was unseeded in the Under 15 division.
Only the top thirty-two ranked players who have signed up for the tournament are automatically placed in the draw so Wiltshire was initially waitlisted but eventually four players withdrew and he was placed in the draw.
In the first round, he defeated John Zhang 11 -7, 11 – 4, 11 -4 then Erik Wang 4 – 11, 11 – 2, 11 – 9, 11 – 5 in the second round to set up a clash with the ¾ seed Nathan Feinstein in the quarterfinals.
In the quarterfinals, he beat Nathan Feinstein in straight games 11 – 8, 11 – 8, 11 -3 and then took care of the No 2 seed Winston Park 11 – 8, 11 – 3, 11 – 5 in the semifinals.
In the finals, he came up against No ¾ seed Rana Thakkar who had upset the No 1 seed in his semifinal match. Rana won a close first game 11 – 8 but then Wiltshire bounced back to take the second game 11 – 6. In the third game, Rana came out like a boy possessed and completely destroyed Wiltshire in this game winning it 11 – 2.
The fourth game went back and forth with Rana having three match balls but just could not close out the match with Wiltshire really digging deep to eventually prevail in the fourth game 16 – 14. The fifth game also was a see-saw battle which was close throughout but eventually, Wiltshire would prevail on his first match ball to take the game 11 – 9 and the match three games to two to win his first US tournament.
