Thanks everyone for reading my first article and many more to come. Sorry for the late post but better then nothing.
Ok, so the tournament kicked off on the Saturday morning. It was a struggle trying to find someone who could take me there and back but came Nathan to the rescue willing to take me home. YAY! My first match was against an older lady (who’s name I have sadly forgotten) that had to pull out in the third due to a groin injury. That kinda sucked but was forgotten when the tournament director asked if I could have a hit with one of the other players in my Div Andrew Ritchie a junior from Coffs Harbour, which had a last second forfeit. I later found out that I were to play Andrew in the finals. Second match of the day was against Jakob Dillion that was as well from Coffs Harbour. Our previous match was at the North Coast Open which I won comfortably in 3. I’m not sure what it was that day but mentally I couldn’t push. It might have been the easy win from our last match that made me ease off but easing off only made it harder. I just managed to pull through winning in 5. I made it to the finals which was great. My last match was on Sunday at 2:30pm. It sucked having to wait for a good 4 hours till our match but finally it was time. First 2 games were amazing, I was playing so well. We had some intense rallies and I was loving them! So what do I do when I’m playing terrifically? I ease off….. He got the 3rd then the 4th. I was getting so frustrated with myself “why can’t you hit this, why can’t you hit that?” So I had to change something, I went on the court completely setting my mind to slowing the game down, I went on winning the game 11-4.
I have learnt so much from that weekend but one thing for sure is that I need to work on my mental strength and only push harder when it starts getting easier. According to Nathan “there’s no such thing as an easy match.” Besides all the learning I got to talk not just to juniors but inspiring elite athletes such as Lisa, Christine and many more. So that’s it guys stay tuned for more of my progress in this crazy world of squash.
Find the video of my match against Jakob Dillion on my sportspage
