The first installment of this season's Black Knight Player of the Month celebrates a great start to the 2017-18 campaign by 4 worthy squash stars that had exceptional Septembers and Octobers on the Court. Squash Ontario is once again thrilled to have Black Knight as the official sponsor of the provincial rankings and the accompanying Player of the Month award. Each recipient will receive a Squash Ontario plaque and prize pack from Black Knight. Congratulations this month to Nicole Garon, Howard Armitage, Iman Shaheen and Daniel Deverill.
Nicole Garon takes home Female Player of the Month honours by dropping down two age categories to capture the Ontario 30+ Masters Championship without dropping a game and also goes 4-0 as a captain in the Women's Masters Team Championships held in Kingston in September. Nicole, the head professional at Brantford Movati, narrowly edges out the first Women's 65+ Provincial Champion in recent history Alison Madden of the Ontario Racquet Club who defeated a former BK Player of the Month runner-up Christine Kogon of Georgetown. Honorable mentions go to Masters Champions Sue Desa and Elka Markus who will represent Ontario in January at the Masters Team Champs as well Holly Delavigne of Sarnia and Andrea Chaves of Brock University for wining the Women's A draws at the NASH Cup and Court Classic respectively.
Men's BK Player of the Month honors go to Howard Armitage of Northfield Racquets Club in Waterloo who prevailed in one of the strongest Men's 70+ fields in recent history at the Ontario Masters Championships at Executive Squash and Fitness in Vaughan in October. Armitage returns to the provincial winners circle by defeating the unseeded Chris Wheeler of the Toronto Cricket Club in a well contested final. Our runner-up for Sept/Oct's award was Rudy Goodridge of GoodLife Northfield who took home the Men's 60+ at the #2 seed over Tony Pitoscia in yet another strong masters draw. Honorable mentions for BK Player of the Month in Sept/Oct are all of our men's Provincial Masters Champions including Mario Raponi (M65+), Tom Powers (M55+), David Sly (M50+), Bruce Marrison (45+), Don Lee (M40+) and Brad Hanebury (M30+).
On the junior girls side Iman Shaheen of Ottawa, a past runner-up, nabs her first BK Player of the Month award. Shaheen, who won Roundtable Capital Gold #1's U13 event went on to move up to U15 for Gold #2 and was a surprise silver medalist. Our finalist for the BK award is Amal Nadeem Izhar of ORC who won Gold #2 in the U13 category and Silver #2 in the U15 category on back to back weekends. Other notable performers include Marlow Benson (Gold #1 U19 Champion), Jena Ravindran (Gold #1 U15 Champion), Leah McGillicuddy (Silver #2 U15 Champion), Deana Shah (Silver #1 U15 Champion), Keira Rawlins (Silver #1 U13 Champion) and Georgia Baldwin (11-2 record including Silver #2 U11 Champion).
The BK Player of the month for junior boys this period is the KW's Daniel Deverill, who narrowly edges out the Granite Club's Ethan Jain and ORC's George Crowne. Daniel confirmed his #1 provincial U13 ranking by winning Roundtable Gold #1 and #2 defeating arch-rival Jacob Marrison of Mayfair Parkway and surprise finalist Ewen Harris of the Toronto Lawn, respectively, and will look to bring more hardware back to Ontario at the upcoming and Canadian and US Junior Opens. Close behind was the Granite Club's Ethan Jain who jumped from #16 to #5 in the province in 6 weeks on the strength of back to back wins at Silver #1 and Grand Prix #2. He joins the upper echelon of the deepest and most talented U11 fields in the province this decade. George Crowne, a former BK Player of the Month winner himself continues to rack up Gold tournament wins, quietly wining Gold #1 and #2 in the U19 category despite being still only 16. Honourable mentions go to Kent Rawlins (Richmond Hill), Jack Jones (Cricket Club) and Arham Izhar (ORC) who gatecrashed the BU11 Top 5 after a series of strong results this month.
Congratulations to all our top performers in September and October of 2017 on a great start to the season!