A successful year of tournaments for UStA Squash!
The University of St Andrews Squash Men’s 1st and 2nd teams had a successful set of tournaments this academic year in the BUCS, Nationals, Dundee League.
Squash matches comprise of teams of 5 playing each other with each person playing their equally ranked opponent on the other team in an individual match. Matches are best of 5 games, games to 11 points in BUCS or 15 in D&DL. The team score reflects the number of player-wins of the five individual matches.
Starting the Men’s 1s, they placed 3rd in the men’s Scottish first division in a tournament back in November at Heriot Watt University, however because of the position they finished at, the team qualified for the Men’s National Trophy (second only to the National Championships). They had a bye in the first round, a 5-0 win over Edinburgh 2s in the second round, and a 4-1 loss to Newcastle 2s in the quarter finals, finishing as quarterfinalists. This is the second of two good years for the team as they placed second in Scottish 1s division and qualified for the National Championships (the top tournament) but we lost first round last year.
Although, the Men’s 1s placed third in their BUCS league (Scottish Tier 1), they had their main success in the local weekly Dundee and District League. Over the year, they won 16 out of 19 matches with mostly 5-0 results, only losing fixtures by forfeit. They came first overall, beating runners-up Forthill 1s by 4 competition points after their final match against St Andrews 2s on 1st April. The team was headed up by captain, John Bryan, who will now be graduating after three years in the role. The team consists of Fraser Laing, Raphael Magron-Lorenzo, Richard Lau, and Tommy Kallestrup, with appearances from second team players on occasion.
Moving onto the Men’s 2s, this was the first-year team competed in BUCS so it was great to see some excellent results! In October, they competed in the Scottish Tier 2 league – centralised to one weekend at Oriam, Heriot-Watt. They faced off against Glasgow 2s, Dundee 1s, Aberdeen 2s, and Heriot-Watt 2s winning 5-0, 5-0, 4-1, 4-1 respectively. With a clean sweep, they came first! The team consisted of Steven Hill, Evan Chu, Euan Hay Smith and Alec Hill who played both days with Alex Goss-Pastor completing the lineup on day one and the captain, Thomas Macmullan on day two.
In Semester 2 came the knockout competition – the Scottish Conference Cup in which the team made it to the final! Round 1 was against Glasgow 2s followed by an away match against Heriot Watt in Edinburgh, another 5-0 win that took the team to the cup final. However, a defeat to Strathclyde 1s left the team with the silver medal. These were Euan’s final BUCS matches for the team before he leaves at the end of this year and has been one of the people responsible for starting the 2s team at St Andrews. Oliver Hartley, Evan Chu, Dan Kane and Thomas Macmullan all also contributed to the team’s run to the final, a fantastic achievement for a team that was competing in BUCS for the first time!
A huge congratulations to both the Mens 1s and 2s team for their fantastic achievements this year!