Four of Jamaica’s top male squash players were scheduled to leave the island on Friday afternoon for the PanAm Qualifiers in Cartagena, Colombia.
Reigning national champion Julian Morrison, winner of the recent national senior trials Tahjia Lumley, Bruce Burrowes and Dane Schwier will be seeking to qualify to play in the upcoming PanAm Games. They will return to the island on June 12.
Karen Anderson, president of the Jamaica Squash Association, expects a tough qualifier but is hopeful that the team will do well. “It’s going be a very tough competition. There are 14 teams vying for six spots so it’s all of Pan America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean and so the main competitors obviously are the strongest contenders from Mexico, USA, Canada, Colombia (and) Argentina.”
“Colombia, however, has already qualified along with Chile. Chile is the home team for PanAm and Colombia won through the South American Games, so they qualified through that. It’s going to be extremely hard as we are going up against the powerhouses in the PanAm region, but we feel that we have a chance and the reality is if you don’t go, you don’t get a chance to actually compete to qualify so we made the decision to send our team and we are looking forward to see how they manage.”
She described the team as “a young team. Actually, it’s a team mixture of youth and experience. Bruce Burrowes and Dane Schwier have played at the PanAm Games region before, and Julian (Morrison). This will be Tahjia’s first time and he will be leading the team out there and we are looking forward to that.”
Coach Rene Denis will meet up with the team in Colombia.
Three of the four players expressed optimism that the team will actually qualify for the PanAm Games.
Reigning national champion Julian Morrison said, “You can expect that we will be giving a hundred per cent. We have put in a lot of work for the last two months to really prepare ourselves for this. Initially, we thought it would be an elevated court but finding out that it is very flat so we are not necessarily at a disadvantage due to the altitude. It is hot over there but we coming from Jamaica, especially this summer we will be able to weather that storm but I guess the toughest thing – will we be able to manage that length of the tournament with all these three different categories. We have individuals, doubles and teams going on.”
Bruce Burrowes, who did well at the trials, said that the team was not afraid of the expected competition. “We are going up against very, very big countries like America, Peru, these really big juggernauts of the western hemisphere but we really think that we can take them on. We little but we tallawah.”
Tahjia Lumley, winner at the national senior trials, said that preparation had gone well. “On the doubles side, we have been doing a lot of doubles training together. We have also started training as a team on the physical side in the gym with our trainer. On that aspect, we have been doing a lot of team bonding which is really good for us, something new but it’s also something that we hope to continue in the future.”
He also said “On the mental side a lot of work has been done there. Hopefully, we can all put it together on each day that we go out there with our flag on our back and make sure that we make Jamaica proud.”
