Essex players Aaron Allpress and Mikey Tallentire got the new season off to a flier at the weekend when they both bagged silverware at the Northants Summer Squash Festival.
Aaron (pictured left) won the U17 tournament, held at Diana’s Squash Club in Wellingborough, beating Samuel Hay 2-0, 11-4 11-4; Lewis Brown 2-0, 11-3 11-7 and Odran Imlah 2-0, 11-3 11-8 in the final.
Mikey, meanwhile, carried off the Under-13 trophy in a five-player shoot-out. The Colchester lad overcame Max Hyde, Nero Harms and Nils DeJong-Carter two games to love and repeated the score against local player Tom Lawson who finished in second place.
Mikey’s older brother Guy took seventh spot in a competitive Under-19’s event and Ben Richardson was ninth. Essex’s Tom Bird was in decent form in the under-15’s finishing third.
Elsewhere, Joel Braddock played in the U13 event at the Brighton Open. After a first round bye and a comfortable second round, he played Daniel Power in the quarter final. Joel won the first game comfortably but allowed himself to get distracted by a contentious call from the ref and lost the second game as a result. He managed to refocus and impose himself again in the third, pulling ahead after the first half of the game had been even, winning it and the match.
He faced local boy Toby Ponting in the final and after winning another comfortable first game, Toby adjusted his tactics and took the second game with some excellent serving and impeccable length. The third game was nip and tuck with Joel reaching match ball at 10-9 and then again at 11-10.
Despite Joel putting him under all sorts of pressure both those points ended with Toby managing to find the nick. With his first match ball at 12-11 Toby played another immaculate length drive into Joel’s backhand corner which was unplayable. Joel was bitterly disappointed to lose such a close match which he felt he should have won, but paid tribute to his much older opponent’s consistency and fighting spirit.
Main picture: Mikey (left) and runner up Tom Lawson.