By Morissa Lindsay
Despite not being able to field their strongest team at the 37th staging of the Caribbean Area Squash Association (CASA) Championships, Barbados captains Shawn Simpson and Jodi Smith-Padmore have expressed confidence that the team will still give of their best.
The tournament which was last contested in 2019 because of the Coronavirus pandemic is scheduled to run from August 21 to 27 at the Liguanea Club in Kingston. Barbados is sending a seven-member team which was announced last night during a press conference at the Barbados Squash Club, Marine Gardens, Hastings, Christ Church. This country’s national squash team comprise Shawn Simpson, Khamal Cumberbatch, Stewart St. John, Darien Benn, Jodi Smith- Padmore, Muffin Stollmeyer and Eboni Atherley.
Unfortunately, Barbados’ number one female player and two-time CASA champion Meagan Best along with Amanda Haywood and Jada Smith-Padmore, all based in the United States of America, were not released from their respective schools and are unable to compete.
Barbados team manager Michael Best explained that the timing of this year’s competition which falls at the end of summer in August is the main cause they are unable to field their strongest team.
In addition, Best pointed out that normally it would be a total of five players and a reserve for both the female and male teams but unfortunately Barbados are not in a position to send their full quota of players to compete against the eight participating countries.
They include defending women’s and team champions Guyana as well as host Jamaica who are the titleholders in the men’s as well as Trinidad and Tobago, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and British Virgin Islands.
“It is not a problem finding the players. We do have some juniors coming up but obviously this is a senior tournament and the standard is pretty high. And the selection and rankings committee made the decision that they wouldn’t necessarily want to put somebody at a level where they wouldn’t feel comfortable playing and damage them psychologically in terms of future events.
“So, we want to keep them where they are feeling positive about what they are doing. They just came back from junior CASA where they performed really well and I think the next level would be perhaps a bridge too far to the next level. We do have another youngster Alex Stewart and others but they are overseas and not available and that is the real challenge. The timing of the tournament is the real issue coming on to the back end of the summer which is the end of August where most of the people are based overseas and going back to school,” Best told the media.
Both captains Simpson and Smith-Padmore shared the same views that they expect Team Barbados to do well even though they are without some of their key players and no longer have the services of American coach Aidan Harrison who completed his stint with the Barbados Squash Association (BSA) on conclusion of the Commonwealth Games. Therefore, 11-time national champion Simpson will serve as player/coach and he is ready for the task having coached many of the players on the team since they were juniors. Meanwhile, first-time female captain Jodi Smith-Padmore said this is the greatest opportunity of her squash career and expressed immense gratitude for the opportunity to serve her country in this leadership capacity.
“This is my first time being the captain of the team, it is just three of us so it is not hard to work together but I do expect us to give our best knowing it is not the usual five players. All we have to do is work together and as I said it will be much easier and we just have to give our best this year,” Smith-Padmore stated.
While admitting that her past experience playing at the senior level of CASA has been a nervous one, Smith-Padmore who is seeded in the top four of the tournament for the first time, reiterated that she will give a good account of herself especially playing in the mixed
double for the first time with partner Darien Benn.
Senior national champion Khamal Cumberbatch is seeded at number two for senior CASA behind Jamaica’s top seed and nine-time Caribbean king Christopher Binnie who will be chasing his tenth consecutive individual championship trophy on home soil. However, the 20-year-old Cumberbatch expressed confidence in his chances with age on his side. “It is such a pleasure I have been going to this competition for a couple years and worked my way up. I am still young at 20-years-old but I have been doing this for quite a while so I am happy to get the number two seed. I have been working hard to reach this (level) and expect to go higher.
“It is always going to be tough, right now the number one player is Christopher Binnie from Jamaica; going into this year he is going to try to win his tenth consecutive title so that alone speaks for itself. I believe I have a chance to go in and take him out, he is 32, 33, so I would say I have age on my side. He has the experience but going in anything is possible.”
The youngest team member is Eboni Atherley at age 15 and she is happy for the opportunity despite feeling nervous. “I feel proud to make the senior team and I will try and do my best knowing that it is my first tournament to use it as an experience to go further,” Atherley expressed while she
admitted feeling a little nervous playing at this level.
Barbados will not be represented in the master’s category of the Senior CASA because top players Karen Meakins and Mark Sealy are both in Poland representing the country which BSA president Norman Rice said has further depleted the team.
Rice revealed that the association is faced with other challenges that include a lack of funding but at the same time they are resilient and will continue to work through each situation.
“Again COVID had put a damper on the amount of funds available and the ability to generate funds through sponsorships because a lot of the people who you would normally approach for sponsorship, they were having a hard time business-wise. So, those were the number of challenges that we faced. As I said the team is resilient and with the team that we have we are going to give our best and as Shawn mentioned we still have favourable seedings, so we will try and make that work for us,” Rice explained.
morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb
