There were six 3-man teams in the Team event, with most of them having a realistic chance of winning, but it was the “Jason’s Jewels” team (consisting of Jason Jewel, Steve Abbey, and Steve Jefferies) who took the $500 winner-take-all first prize in an all-SBAC final against my own “60-30-10” team, consisting of myself, Joe Kearns, and Mike Lewis. Each team had to consist of a player rated above 5.0, a player rated below 5.0, and a player rated below 4.0 on current SCSRA rankings.

In Sunday’s final the #3s went on first and played a great match, showing off the future of squash at SBAC, with a confident Mike Lewis beating a tentative Steve Jefferies 3-0. At #1 Jason Jewell leveled the match when I re-injured an old hamstring injury and retired at the end of the second game with the score at 1-1, leaving the outcome down to the final match between the #2s. Joe Kearns had commanding leads in both of the first two games but Steve Abbey’s doggedness and never-say-die style saw him win them both 10-9, 10-8. From there he never looked back and took the final game 9-4 and the cash for his team!

“The Pumpkinheads II” team (Ronen Goldberg, Richard Holgate, and Rob Porter) took 3rd place against “Terry & The Terrible Twosome” (Christian Geitner, Erik Olson, and Terry Eagle), while “The Last Minutes” (John Chilcott, Jon Siegel, and Ferdy Geitner) beat “San Diego Spirit” (Al Castelino, Tom Aarts, and Jan Strand) for 5th.

I was most happy to have 17 juniors competing in two junior divisions, 15 in the Open and 5 in the under 12s, some of those playing a match for the first time! This is by far the most junior players we have ever had in an SBAC tournament. It was fantastic to see these matches, aided by some creative rules amendments and refereeing, and help from parents Marc Reisman and Bob Bartlein. The improvement in play just over the course of the event was amazing. In the older group CATE School’s Griffin Richards, son of SBAC member Kim Richards, took first place in the Open juniors, beating teammate Jesse Glass 3-0, while 9 year old Ben Reisman proved too good for the under 12 field beating Mauricio Castillo into second place in their round robin.

In other divisions, Debbie Brown (Santa Barbara) beat Nathan Scott (LA) 3-2 in the Mens 4.5/5.0 final, Jeffrey Wong (LA) beat Ron Bujarski (LA) 3-0 in the Mens 3.5/4.0 final, Chris Tracy (CATE School) beat Suzie McSherry (Santa Barbara) 3-0 in the Mens 3.0 final, and Ben Black (LA) beat Chris Chau (CATE School) 3-0 in the Mens 2.5 final. Consolation winners were Jan Strand (San Diego), Chris Steinbeck (UCSB), Thomas John (Santa Barbara), and Eric Sarette (CATE School) respectively.

Many thanks to Head/Penn USA for providing prizes for the event, and mostly to Bob Bartlein for his amazing unwavering continued sponsorship of this event, surely one of the longest such associations in the country.