The 2020 Ontario Winter Games took place this past weekend in Orillia and surrounding areas with the Barrie Athletic Club playing host to the squash games. Eight junior teams, totaling 64 players, came from all over Ontario come to compete against each other over three days.
After three rounds of pool play matches, undefeated teams GTA East and GTA West moved into the 1-4 playoff, along with second place pool finishers Western and Southwestern Ontario. Finishing 3rd and 4th in their respective pools, team Niagara, GTA North, Ottawa and Northern would play off in the 5-8 crossover.
The semi-finals were extremely close with fixtures lasting more than 4 hours! GTA East secured a finals position over SWO with a 6-2 win while team Western pulled off an amazing 5-3 win over GTA West thanks to a few 5 game wins swaying in their favour! This meant a GTA East and Western re-match in the finals. In the 5-8 crossover draw, hall of famer Rob Brooks and his GTA North team took out Ottawa 6-2, while team Niagara defeated Northern 6-2.
On Finals Sunday, the GTA East team made up of Maya Askari, Alex Feleski, Ashley Hall, Nikhil Ismail, Ethan Jain, Ariel McCuaig, Leah McGillicuddy, Alex Yuzpe and coach Reiko Peter defeated team Western to take the 2020 Ontario Winter Games title with a score of 5-3. In the 3/4 playoff, GTA West prevailed with a 6-2 win over Southwestern Ontario. In the 5/6 playoff, GTA North took out the vibrant team from Niagara 5-3. And team Ottawa took 7th place over Northern 6-2.
Special thanks to the amazing coaches, managers who watched and cheered for all 160 matches played!!! This event is always a great experience for our high performance players to work as a team and support each other on and off the court. All rosters and results can be found at the link below.