The annual veterans squash festival is an age handicapped event to celebrate senior squash and involves teams from the Veterans Club GB, Escorts, RAC Club and Army Masters/Vets. The Army has historically strong ties with all the clubs and is therefore honoured to have been included yet again in this excellent event. The event was unable to be held last year due to COVID restrictions and this was the first competitive fixture for Army Masters/Vets since Army sports was restricted by the pandemic.
This event took place at the RAC Club, Woodcote Park, Epsom. The club has 2 singles courts and 2 doubles courts. The team were excellently hosted throughout by both the RAC and the event organisers.
The Army team changed considerably over the weeks leading to the event due to injury and other commitments. This meant a heavier lean on the retired members of the Squash community to field a team. Even then the team went one player short due to a last-minute deployment. With a weakened team, the pressure was on to retain the trophy that the Army has only conceded once since it has competed for it.
All matches throughout the day were played in great humour with everyone enjoying the opportunity to catch up and play competitive squash again. Player of the day has to go to Craig Webb, who not only stepped up to play at No 1 at the last minute and covered two doubles matches in the absence of our missing player, but also won all five of his matches.
Unfortunately, in the doubles, it didn’t go so well for the Ashman’s who were up against it as the No 1 doubles paring, but despite not winning a match still managed to pick up valuable points for the team. One notable match was the Smith’s “brothers” doubles match against Woodliffe (85) and Kinder (86) and the considerable handicap they overcame to win the match; although we all hope able to play such quality squash if we reach such distinguished age
