Winchester wins prestigious Roehampton School Squash Invitation
On Sunday 17th March, six Winchester squash players travelled to Roehampton to take part in the prestigious Roehampton School Squash Invitation – an annual tournament where sixteen schools compete for the prestigious trophy. It was an incredibly testing day where true character was shown.
We began the tournament with our first group stage match against Epsom College, last year’s champion and a team that we had beaten 3-2 only five days before the tournament. Fully confident, the team may have been a little complacent and Epsom were up to the challenge, seeking to redeem themselves for last week’s loss. Winchester went down in a closely contested 3-2 loss. Although slightly discouraged, the team never gave up. “It’s ok boys, let’s come second in the group, make the semi-finals, then get our revenge on Epsom in the final!” said Richard Atkinson, our esteemed coach. With our heads held high, this is exactly what we did.
We won 5-0 in the next two group stage matches against Wellington and Tonbridge respectively. When the semi-finals came, we were up to the challenge to take on the 2015 and 2016 champions: Harrow. The team played their best squash of the day and managed to pull through a 5-0 win to set up a final against Epsom.
The final was extremely close. Epsom won the first game in all of the first three matches, two on a tie break point at 14-all. Our players did not give in and staged a remarkable comeback in each of these matches winning 2-1 to take an unassailable 3-0 lead and thus the championship itself, leaving the remaining two matches only to decide the final score. The overall result was a 4-1 win for Winchester and our first ever Roehampton Schools Invitational Division One victory.
This victory is testament to all of the hard work that the team puts in, day in and day out, and all of the support that we get from our coaches, Richard Atkinson and Jesse Engelbrecht, and the squash dons, Luke Ronaldson, Alex Humphreys, and Nicholas Townson.
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