2008 Cellink Southern Caribbean Squash Championships...Nicolette Fernandes, Kristian Jeffrey lead Guyana’s challenge

2008 Cellink Southern Caribbean Squash Championships…Nicolette Fernandes, Kristian Jeffrey lead Guyana’s challenge

Aug 18, 2008 Sports

National and St. Lucia Open champions Nicolette Fernandes and Kristian Jeffrey will spearhead Guyana’s attack in the 2008 Cellink Southern Caribbean Squash Championships, which is scheduled to begin this morning at the Georgetown Club courts.

The tournament will feature some of the region’s best players with defending Caribbean champion Gavin Cumberbatch leading a strong Barbados team, while the player he defeated in the finals, Trinidadian Colin Ramasra will head up an equally impressive team from the Twin Island Republic.

The other two teams in the men’s competition will be the OECS and the unknown quantity of the tournament Venezuela, who are making a welcomed return to Caribbean competition after an extended absence.

Barbados will be Guyana’s only competition in the women’s tournament, but they also have a formidable team which features five of the top six seeds in the women’s draw.

They will be led by former Southern Caribbean champion Karen Meakins who upset Nicolette Fernandes in the early rounds of the St. Lucian Open only to be annihilated by Fernandes in the finals.

The individual championships are scheduled to start today, with the finals taking place on Wednesday. The team championships are scheduled to begin on Thursday and end on Saturday. The last time Guyana hosted these championships, Nicolette Fernandes and Shawn Badrinauth won the individual titles while Guyana swept the men’s, women’s and overall team titles.

Barbados are the current team champions in all three categories while Caribbean champion Gavin Cumberbatch is also the defending Southern champion and Guyana’s very own Nicolette Fernandes is the defending ladies’ champion.

Guyana’s men’s team features a well balanced mix of youth and experience with former national champions Regan Pollard and Robert Fernandes lending support to the current national champion Jeffrey.

While overseas based Robert McDavid will add an international flavor to the team and the young brigade that led Guyana to the Caribbean boy’s title, Alexander Arjoon, Raphael DeGroot and Oliver Downes will add some depth in the lower categories.

Apart from Nicolette Fernandes and Tiffany Solomon, Guyana’s ladies team will feature four debutants in Mary Fung-A-Fat, Alysa Xavier and the Jeffrey twins Keisha and Kayla who are all 15 years old or younger.