Brentwood School - Brentwoodian 2020

48 Most students competed in the friendly fixture with Felsted School and a friendly U19 fixture versus Harrow School, both home and away. This year saw many more students competing in Essex standard tournaments including James Sydenham, Ellis Sooprayen and myself, all three of us playing for the Essex county team. By Oren Goddard U13 Boys This season has been very successful, challenging and enjoyable for the KS3 squash teams, with both the A and B teams working extremely hard in matches and competitions as well as team training sessions. The A team consisted of Third Years Oren Goddard (Captain) and James Sydenham, Second Years Ellis Sooprayen, Reggie Edwards and Oliver Noble and First Year, Matthew Yip. The B team consisted of Second Years Oliver Noble (Captain), Jaideep Cheema, Dmitry Molostvov, Fraser Forbes, and team debutants, Thomas Kirilov and Vivek Kumar. Both teams put in great performances in the National Schools Competition. For the A team, in round one everyone played extremely well against Felsted and Haberdashers’, securing the team’s place in the next round. We then played John Hampden Grammar school and Dr Challoner’s Grammar, where we won comfortably. Next was Whitgift who were a tough test for our physical and mental skills, but we came through successfully. As a result we were through to the National Schools Finals, with a guarantee for us to be in the top eight schools in the whole country for our age group. Unfortunately, Nationals has been postponed and our final position is yet to be decided. The B team played really well in their National matches and fought hard against more experienced opposition. The teams all enjoyed celebrating with a team tradition of McDonalds from the service station on the way home (as well as teasing Mr Wood about his minibus driving skills!). A number of team players also competed for the School in U19 friendlies against much older opposition such as matches against Harrow and Felsted. Outside of the School team, Oren Goddard, Ellis Sooprayen, Reggie Edwards and Matthew Yip played in several tournaments U14 Girls Our coach, Mr Wood, regularly keeps us on our toes with top tips to improve. There is never a dull moment during lunch squash club. As a team we have achieved so much this year considering that we have only just started playing together. We are all very proud as the U14 Girls’ team competed in the National Schools Competition for the first time in over ten years. In this competition we won against Beneden (who came 2nd in the previous year) and St Joseph’s College to reach the finals which means we were one of the top eight teams in the country. Unfortunately we only played these two matches in this competition due to the Pandemic and the competition has been postponed. Watch this space, fingers crossed! A huge amount of girls have started coming to squash and hopefully this will mean that we might be able to have two teams next year. Many of us have started to train with Essex Squash and hopefully will represent Essex soon. Overall this has been an amazing squash season/year and I am sure I speak on behalf of all of the girls when I thank Mr Wood for making squash so enjoyable. By Olivia Mitchell resulting in places in the U15 Essex team for Oren and Ellis and the U13 team for Reggie and Matthew. Overall it has been a great and hardworking season and we are already very excited for the next season and to prepare for the National Finals. By Ellis Sooprayen