Squash BC

BC wins at West Coast Can-AM Team Championships

by Garett Hennigan

Portland Oregon was the site of the first annual West Coast Can-Am Team Championships which took place on April 2, 3, and 4. This new annual team-format tournament had four teams representing the various west coast areas. The areas represented were BC, Seattle, Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The format for the weekend was an expanded version of the very popular Western Canadian Masters Team Championships which take place annually in January. The Can-Am Teams consisted of 14 players, 8 men in the age categories from 25 to 60, and 6 women from 25 to 50.

The BC Team consisted of:

Randy Town, Jim Geddes, Andrew Lynn, Khoon Chua, Garett Hennigan, Kevin Kydd, David Adams, Paul Marley, Alicia Haneine, Janice Saunders, Liz Andrichuk, Seagrin Worster, Kelsey Parsons, Laura Ramsay and accompanied by Leigh Skelton, our injured team captain and Valmai as cheerleader.

Because of last minute injuries and cancellations, the BC team found itself two women short on the Tuesday before the Friday am departure. Liz Andrichuk and Janice Saunders came to the rescue of their province and agreed to come with only three days warning. They made it clear to the author that nothing should be read into the state of their Vancouver social calendar for that weekend by being able to go on such short notice.

The BC team carpooled down to Portland in an array of cars and vans. Everyone arrived safely after the six hour drive but there was some anxiety when David Adams and Paul Marley failed to show up at the hotel. This was later attributed to their fruitless two-hour search for "an IHOP that serves eggs" in the greater Seattle area. The BC team played the Oregon team on Friday night. BC won with a 12-2 match scores but several of the matches were only won in long five game marathons.

The Saturday schedule had a relaxed late start time of 3 pm for the BC team matches. This allowed for a late night get together of the BC team which would have gone on later except for thin walls in the hotel which caused hotel security to close us down after a very heated and loud debate over (not politics, world problems or the economy), but over something real important: the pro and con merits on a theoretical discussion of a particular let call. I would go into details but.....

Saturday started with a relaxed morning of sightseeing and shopping. One of the van drivers came to understand the term "high maintenance" as being more than just relative to vehicles but also to passengers as well when he had inadvertently agreed to chauffeur shoppers in search of the infamous
Nike Factory Outlet and other shopping malls while consuming close to a tank of gas in the process.

On Saturday, the BC team played the Seattle team with BC winning 13-1. It would have been a clean sweep except for the disappointing 3-0 loss by the author. The author was quite open in admitting he played poorly in his disastrous showing and apologized publicly for his lackluster performance in letting down the entire team. Andrew Lynn, the perceptive open player that he is, speculated that perhaps there was another explanation for the author's loss. He speculated that perhaps Garett had sacrificed his fragile reputation as a clutch player for the sake of the long-term growth of tournament, squash on the west coast, and future US/Canada relations, by losing to the Seattle player and giving the Seattle team 1 point so they wouldn't get too discouraged and still remain keen to send a team next year. Even under intense pressure the author would neither confirm nor deny Andrew Lynn's theory. The only significant consequence of the loss was that it seemed to cause a traumatic rash of Alzheimer-like symptoms on Saturday evening in certain BC team members who kept periodically asking the author throughout the night, "Does anybody know who was the only person to lose today?" even though the author had clearly answered the question at least two dozen times.

The Saturday night dinner was at the Greek Cusina restaurant in downtown Portland. After a great dinner, the entertainment consisted of group traditional Greek dance lessons led by the proprietor, a solo dance
exhibition, and concluded with the traditional Greek plate breaking ceremony. The evening eventually ended for many of the BC team members at an Irish pub with live music. There were reports that several other spots were visited after that by a smaller group of stragglers.

In the deciding matches on Sunday morning the BC team won 12-2 to win the tournament, led by the inspirational five-game victory of Andrew Lynn, the Canadian 30+ champion, over Mark Allen, the US 30+ champion. The BC team was awarded the new really huge West Coast Can-Am trophy, only surpassed in
size by the Stanley Cup.

There were several other unofficial awards given out as well:

Most Consecutive Misses of the BC Team Photo Sessions: Tie - Jim Geddes and Randy Town (one possible explanation that was floated around was that they had inadvertently moved their watches ahead one hour prematurely and were operating the whole weekend on daylight savings time)

Best Night Club Reduced Cover Charge Negotiators: RandyTown and Liz Andrichuk

Best Dance of the Weekend: Kwoon Chua

Most Attempts to Break their plate at the plate throwing exhibition;3 by Janice Saunders

Best Quote of the weekend: "I am not sure when we got back to the hotel Sunday morning. All I can
remember is that I could hear the birds singing and the sun was coming up..." - Name withheld.

Worst Loss of the Weekend: Garett Hennigan (is it clear now? Are you satisfied? In case you forgot!)

It was fantastic trip and this tournament will just get bigger and better every year. Everyone is already looking forward to next year which will be hosted by Vancouver.

Many thanks to the Multnomah Athletic Club and the Oregon Squash community for hosting the event and especially to Matt Bassett and Sandy Koski for their extraordinary efforts. The biggest thanks, however, goes to Leigh Skelton as the driving force behind the concept and format for this event and its ideal to promote squash on the West Coast, and for his coordinating efforts to assemble and organize the BC team.

If there are any captions you'd like to see here, just email Cathi
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