On the weekend of 1st/2nd February, at Abingdon Squash Club, Oxfordshire hosted their group section in the Senior Men’s Inter County Championships. Vying for a place at the National Finals in March, County Coach and England International, Jason Varrie led a very youthful and inexperienced side against 3 extremely doughty opponents.
In their opening fixture, our chaps encountered Surrey B. Wins for Ben Hedger (Thame) at 1, Jason Varrie (unattached) at 2, Kacper Kwiecinski (Abingdon) at 4 and James Hempstead (Witney) at 5 contributed to a 4-1 success and set them up nicely for their next encounter against Wiltshire whose team exclusively comprised players from Defence Academy.
2 games in a day at this level for Under 15 Boy’s Champion Kacper was a tough ask and he fell agonisingly short of a perfect record losing 6-11 in the last of a 5-set thriller. Fortunately, all his teammates won their rubbers including James McCouat (University) who bounced back from earlier defeat to despatch Adam Oakley 11-9 11-3 11-9.
The Round Robin now moved into Day Two with a very simple equation, Oxon v South Wales A = Winner to Finals Day.
Sam Greenrod (University) stepped in for Kacper and justified his selection with a 3-0 victory before James Hempstead claimed his third success from three outings prevailing 3-1 at String 4. Unfortunately, our Welsh cousins fought back gallantly at that point and reverses for Ben Hedger (0-3), Jason Varrie (1-3) and James McCouat (2-3, 9-11 in the fifth) left our charges disappointed to have missed out on the Big Show.
Jason best summed up their heroic efforts….’We had 4 young debutants in our squad for this tournament and they all did tremendously well and made Oxfordshire proud.’
And so say all of us.