Impressive month for the juniors again. Scott Hanson started playing in the junior leagues for the first time this season, looked competitive throughout peaking with his first victory. Jamie Bulman, having chipped in with some cracking team performances this year was also involved in some tight matches, narrowly losing one, 3-2.

Emily continues to invite the pack to chase her and narrowly lungeds beyond the 3 figures for the season. The final league is a huge one though with 8 players in it and therefore a potential whopping 80 points available. Greg, Jack and the pack are still within shooting distance..

The England Squash rankings have just come out and Joe Dale has just broken into the top 10 lists for Under 13. Now adapting to a new pressure of playing at number 1 in many tournaments, Joe gained this fantastic honour in no small way to a top 25 finish in the British Junior Open – essentially the world title. This finish was the highest of all Durham and Cleveland entrants of whom the county can very proud as entry numbers are severely restricted on ability.

The February junior leagues are now up and they show some historic viewing. Joe Dale, Michael Jones and Sam Hill are missing for the first time and that’s for the excellent news that they are all well established in the senior leagues now.

This of course blows the title race wide open for the top three places all of which are trophy-linked. If this had happened last month, Greg Wass would table-topping but Emily McSorley has had a strong month and takes the mantle. Jack Kerr in his first season is handily positioned too but there is still plenty of time for Andrew Pollard, Scott Hanson, Jamie Bulman, Ted Shepherd or Conor Askins to seize third, second or even top spot. Onward to March..

The new monthly leagues are up for end-December / January 2010. All but one of the top division matches were played which was excellent but it would be good to see more games being played in other divisions.

Joe Dale produced a full series of 3-0 wins but thereafter everything was very tight. Sam Hill just nicked Michael jones for second place despite Michael winning their head to head. Emily McSorley, Greg Wass and Jack Kerr were even tighter with each of them beating each other such that Jack just nicked Greg by 1 point who just nicked Emily by 3 points. All the best to all of them for the new year.

The December England Squash competition superbly run again at Newton Aycliffe saw a white-wash of success for Durham and Cleveland in the boys under-pinned hugely by Redcar. Our county proudly took all the age group titles and Redcar were responsible for all but one of these. Joe Dale continued his strong season at Under 13, coming to the new pressures of top seedings. It seems unlikely that Luke Mabbott, long since accustomed to number one seedings, still qualifies for Under 15 but indeed he does and he secured the title too. The only title not taken by Redcar was won by Danny Hockborn so at least another fellow county member.

James Wass played strongly and will move up the senior team nominations after a powerful first half of the season. Greg Wass entered the Under 11 category and featured prominently. This group does not carry ranking points but is an excellent challenging prequel to them. Sandwiched between the two Wass’s was Sam Hill in the Under 13 who had a tidy first round victory before doing himself no disservice in his next round defeat.

The updated leagues are on the noticeboard at the club with contact details.  Joe Dale goes marching on with Michael Jones continuing to play well under pressure getting results in the senior leagues as well. A good month for Sam Hill too. Three players move up into the top flight and all very worthy of it. Greg Wass had a very strong month with Emily progressing at a wonderful rate. A very welcome addition to the top this month is Jack Kerr who’s the newest to join the party and a fantastic smiling contribution he’s making.

The county have established the leagues now so team games will start soon too..

Congratulations are due to all those who participated in this year’s junior county tournaments which finished in October. All players were a credit to the club and it’s never easy entering these types of competitions with all the extremely high quality players around. Nevertheless in no particular order, Michael Jones, James Wass, Luke Mabbott, Joe Dale, Sam Hill, Greg Wass, Gemma Hill and Sean Maley all played worderfully well. Of these Luke did tremendously well to win the U15 title and get to the U17 final, being a little unfortunate to meet one of the most gifted juniors of recent times in Danny Hockborn. Joe also did superbly well, coming runner-up in the U13 group by the tightest of margins just missing out in the final game of the final. Sean Maley too was runner-up for the U9 title.

On the back of these superb performances, Greg, James, Sam, Gemma, Joe and Luke will all be representing the Durham & Cleveland in the forthcoming inter-county events.

Coaching will restart on Saturday August 15th – all juniors welcome. Any newcomers interested, please call Dominic Hill on 01642 476221 or John Campbell on 01642 474803.

There are several competitions coming up early in the season. There is the Northern Area Tournament, venue to be decided, in the first weekend of September followed by a silver competition at Jesmond the next weekend. This is an excellent opportunity for juniors to get double points for England ranking and will be the closest silver competition. Entry forms available from the England Squash website – see links or search on England Squash (and racketball).

More locally, the junior county tournaments are expected to be the last weekend in September and the first weekend in October. These will be based around Yarm / Norton / Nunthorpe areas so are on the doorstep and are superb for getting you to see who else is around and start building contacts plus develop matchplay

Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council are running an initiative to encourage people back into sport. The sessions are 6pm on Mondays and the first three have gone very well. There is now a break until the 10th August when it will restart and run for 3 more weeks. Anyone wishing to come down will be more than welcome although calling Dominic on 01642 476221 beforehand would be helpful just to make planning the sessions better. At the last session there were 13 attendees of standards from brand new to plenty of promise, slightly biased to more ladies than men and with ages ranging from around 8 to around 60. Cost is £1 which goes to the council for admin. Coaching is provided free with all coaches being qualified

New additions more than welcome.