Mid Canterbury Squash Annual General Meeting

Monday December 5, 7.30pm

An excellent turnout of clubs, with much discussion on the affiliation issue.

Most clubs have voted to re-affiliate with New Zealand Squash, and a couple reconsidering their position, but there's a lot of work to do between now and interclub time!

There's a meeting in late January with Jim O'Grady from NZS coming down, and Jason McLauchlan from Midlands to get stuff sorted and under way.

Affiliation to Squash New Zealand

Over the past few weeks (ok, years), discussions have been held by the clubs making up Mid Canterbury Squash with Squash New Zealand, with a view to possible re-affiliation.

The Mid Canterbury Squash AGM is on December 5, and that will be the final date for decisions.

For the record, the Celtic club has held their AGM, and after much robust discussion, a vote was held and it was a unanimous result to re-affiliate to Squash New Zealand.

On Monday November 21, the Rakaia club voted to re-affiliate to Squash New Zealand - also unanimously.

 The Collegiate club has also voted in favour of re-affiliation.

Please remember the deadline for a decision is at the Mid Canterbury Squash AGM on Monday 5 December.

More to come . . .

Interclub Finals

A strong Ashburton side was victorious in the Division 1 section of the Mid Canterbury Squash 2016 interclub final, played at the Collegiate courts on Friday night (August 19).

Going into the finals night Ashburton had dominated the season, picking up 190 points while Pleasant Point made the final with 149 points.

Collegiate and Celtic filled the minor positions, but it was all Ashburton this year, and the Division 1 pennant will undoubtedly now be hanging on the wall at their Harrison Street courts.

In Division 2 it was always a tight race between the two Methven sides, and while Methven 1 did marginally better over the season, scoring 189 points to Methven’s 184, in finals squash it’s on the night that counts, and the Methven 1 team had to bow to their clubmates.

Temuka and Hinds were the best of the rest in that division.

Collegiate went into the Division 3 final as slight favourites after topping the polls after the previous 18 weeks of competition squash, but as usual in that sector of the tournament it was fiercely competitive throughout, with Pleasant Point, Methven and Celtic all well within sight of the gold with a couple of weeks to play.

But on their home ground Collegiate proved they were the best side in the division, knocking over Point in the final match-up.

Hinds were the leading side throughout the season in Division 4, and while Pleasant Point and the two Geraldine sides weren’t that far off the pace, Hinds carried their form into finals night and consigned Point to their third silver medal of the evening.

Above right: Brenth Schrider from Geraldine on the backhand.

Above left: Pleasant Point's Phillip Campbell winds up for the big shot.

Four in a row - not bad!!

Pat Mulvihill from Geraldine went into Saturday’s Mid Canterbury Squash Championships final a warm favourite, and that’s how it eventually panned out.

The top seed only dropped one game on the way to the final with comprehensive wins over Matt Speedy (Rakaia) and Collegiate’s Phil Hurley, and faced Sam Shearer (Ashburton) who was equally impressive, beating Neville Mulvihill (Geraldine) and Kendall Sparrow (Ashburton) to make the final at the Collegiate courts.

But it was all Mulvihill in the big match.

Even in the first game B2-graded Shearer was forced into errors, pushed into boasts that found the tin or just left stranded after long rallies that Mulvihill dominated.

Sam did show in the third game signs that Pat couldn’t afford to relax his stranglehold, with one superb forehand drive that was never coming back, and an attacking boast that must have shaved the top of the tin, but in the end he was left chasing scraps from the higher-graded Mulvihill, who went on to take the match, and a championship double hat-trick.

In keeping with recent events (the Celtic third v fourth playoff between Corey Hastie and John McDonnell was the game of the year), the battle for third place was a classic in more ways than one.

Phil Hurley and Kendall Sparrow took to the court with the old ‘lollipop’ rackets.

That is the wooden ones with tiny heads, as used by the likes of Susan Devoy in her earlier days, but the old-style equipment seemed to have no detrimental effect on the players, as they produced a fine display of entertaining squash, with only a few ‘gin’ shots to be blamed on the rackets.

For the record, Sparrow took out the clash in straight sets.

Mitch Sim (Methven) continued his fine form of late with a 3-0 victory over Ashburton’s Garry Mayne in the B grade final.

Mitch had to be good, as Garry has been putting some super form out there himself recently, coming runner-up in a classy B grade field at the Celtic tournament.

Second-seeded Sam Harrison from Celtic beat Mark Kennedy (Ashburton) in the C grade decider, after Mark had knocked out top seed Jeremy Robinson and Collegiate’s Mitchell Fergus, while in the D grade top seed Jake Bremner won in straight sets over Mitchell Stoddart (Collegiate), after disposing of Collegiate’s Peter Yates and Steve Symonds on the way.

Kurt Jemmett took a little longer to get past Rodney Eden in the E grade final, eventually taking the honours in four sets, while Sarah Watson did best in the lower grade round robin, with Codey Hurley taking the runner-up spot.

Above: Collegiate's Jeremy Robinson and John Hetrick battle it out.

Below: Adam Clement and Sam Harrison, both from Celtic, get right into it at the Mid Canterbury champs.

Interclub

Check out the Inter Club Information for the Points Tables.

Important Interclub stuff:

1. Defaults. If someone defaults on a Tuesday night, there's a player called Dee Fault on everybody's Grading List; just use them as the losing player; four times if necessary, then you can load up the whole result (easy points if you're the winner).
2. Following Tuesday interclub the winning team captain or their Interclub Co-Ordinator must upload the individual match results to the web site mcsquash.co.nz. Instructions are below - before Thursday night.
3. To maintain a record of the round the result sheet must be photographed or scanned and e-mailed to either This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Interclub 2016 - How To . .

1. Enter InterClub Results.  
2. Go to: mcsquash.co.nz
3. Go to Enter InterClub Results (top right)
4. Select your division/submit
5. Selection Tournament (whatever the right date is)
6. Club 1 should be your club; select your opposing club from Club 2 list
7. Select Player 1 (the list will open your club’s players)
8. Selection Player 2 (the list will open with your opponent’s club players)
9. Selection Winning Player
10. LOCK Player Scores & Match Result (MUST: that’s for the Grading List)
11. Match result (game score)
12. Repeat for each player.
13. Winning Club: (select winner)
14. Winning Score: Enter winning score (remember the 2-point winning bonus; very important for the ladder)
15. Submit Scores
16. Done. Don't forget to send a copy, email or fax or whatever, to Point so they have a paper trail of it all!!

Interclub 2016 Rules

Conditions of entry / rules:

• Four players per team
• Grade to be based on the latest grading list as of the 25th March 2016
• We are aware that some players will improve during the season; clubs are required to use their common sense and fairness to move players up a division if necessary
• No lower graded player can play above a higher graded player e.g. E2 above E1
• Players within a division can play in any order if they are the same grade e.g all are C2 players
• Grades are mixed
• Women will use the grade noted on the Mid Canterbury grading list
• Players must be registered on the Mid Canterbury Squash web site. Unregistered players' results will not count.
• No late entries
• Players in finals teams must have played at least 4 games throughout the interclub competition for the same team
• Scoring will be American Score to 15
•  

Any questions please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Jason Clemens 0276329551

The entry fee for 2016 is again $40 per team to be paid to Mid Canterbury District Squash.

Interclub Co-ordinators

This year each club will nominate an Interclub Co-ordinator to act as a key contact for all Interclub related issues e.g. outstanding results. It will be up to each Interclub Co-ordinator to decide how their club deals with results i.e. whether each team captain will input them to website or the Co-ordinator themselves.

Collegiate upgrade their courts

Collegiate upgrade their courts< A revamp of Collegiate Squash Club's courts is well under way and expected to be complete in the next three weeks. Work began on Waitangi weekend with club members pitching in, and club captain Logan Ford is pleased with the progress, noting that it's a vote of confidence in the future of the club, and the sport.
"We still need to lightly sand the floors and re-tape the courts.
"We had about 10-15 people arrive a couple of weekends ago, so it saves on the cost," he said.
Ford said the new look is more traditional, with white replacing the previous pastel colours of the courts.
"It needed it for a while.
"I think it's about 30 years since it's last been done, they were all different colours as well, so it's a more traditional look now," he said.

Collegiate club captain Logan Ford with the work done so far on his club's courts.