Herts County Junior Squash

Herts County Junior Meeting – 7/11/05

Present: Ray, Julian, Dudley, Dave Sciberras

Apologies: Janet, Dave Richards, Dave Scib., Ron Palmer, Jason Foster, Dave Kerr, Simon, Steve

Finances: £1500 from Senior Committee still being chased. Please can we have our money Jason!!

Have approx £4300 on account.

The Herts Closed turned in a small profit (£100) after all costs. Well done Ron!

Inter County
Boys
U19 won 5-0 v Norfolk

U15 won 3-2 v Essex
won 5-0 v Surrey 2

U17 won 5-0 v Essex
lost 5-0 v Surrey

U13 won 5-0 v Essex 2
won 5-0 v surrey 2

Thanks go out to the father of Jack Fowler who ‘took on’ the U13 team manager role. Four out of the seven U13 players were still U11 so this bodes well for the future. If Steve could ask him to come to a committee meeting it would be appreciated.

Girls
U16 won 4-0 v Suffolk
won 3-1 v Norfolk

U14 won 6-2 v camb
won 7-1 v sufflok
drew 4-4 v Norfolk

Intercounty U13 – won 3-0 v Essex
Won 2-1 v Surrey (well done to Anna Bradley who won 9/7 in the 5th)
Julian advised that we hope to have 3 girls ranked in the top 20 in England for their respective ages.
Congrats to everybody involved.
County Shirts – After the first round of inter county it was agreed to purchase 50 shirts across the sizes for all age group teams.
18 small
12 medium
14 large
6 XL

If a sponsor can be found then they should be free of charge. If not £5.00 should be charged as a nominal amount.

Dave Sciberras to discuss with Jason.

Coaching: In line with our Awards for all commitment to assisting coaches the following applications were agreed.

Jonathon Fuller – Part 1
Ben Andrews – Part 1

Neil Waller – Part 2

The Part 1 is being held at HCC and run by Ron Palmer in December. The Part 2 will be held at Redbridge on 4th/5th Feb. Total cost of this is £464.00. Payment was made to Ron Palmer. The Redbridge course will be paid for on receipt of invoice.

Steve Lloyd to speak with these lads to assist with County Coaching FOC for 10 hours each. This will save us some money as we will not need to pay for qualified coaches when they are available.

It was noted that all of these lads have served the County Juniors from an early age and it is good to see that the County are helping to keep their interest in squash for years to come – as coaches and players.

Girls Coaching: 19 attendees at the last session. No charges were made on this occasion

Boys Coaching – Can Steve look at setting up a coaching session for players ranked below the top 6. All age groups from U11 but maybe should put ages together ie u11 and U13, U15, 17 and 19.

Please come back with ideas.

Rankings: It was brought to the committees attention that the rankings that we currently put out are not a true or fair reflection of the standard of any given player at his or her age group. The rankings are reflecting school year and if your birthday happens to fall on the 1st of September then you are in that age group ranking for the whole year even though you are eligible for only one day!.

It was agreed that ranking should be changed to reflect the age of that player and if they go out of the age group then they MUST be moved up into the next age group.

Rankings should be issued on fixed dates ie. 1st December, 1st Feb, 1st April, 1st June and each ranking must be adjusted to ensure any age group only contains children eligible at that date.

Acting in this fashion does not change anything on the Inter-club rules which are maintained at the School year.

Working in this fashion puts us in line with all other counties and England Squash. It also ensures that we have more County number ones for any given age group as players move up.

Our current system is of no use to County managers as the players at the top are often not eligible.

It was also agreed that the first ranking should be from the date of the Herts Closed as once again if your birthday falls before this you could be at number one but not actually compete in that age group. This is a crazy situation.

We could not see one plus for the system we currently adopt and therefore it was agreed that the Herts Ranking should be changed to reflect the age on the date of the ranking list.

If any committee member who was not present has any comments then please e-mail then to me. Any comments should be backed with logical reasoning as to why this proposed change is not acceptable. It has been said that we are changing this because of one person’s complaint. This is total nonsense our system is wrong and must be changed. This new system should commence with immediate effect from 1/12/05. Ron please issue new rankings on the 1/12/05.

A.O.B. : Chris Thomas has been officially asked to join the Junior Committee and accepted. We look forward to seeing him at the next meeting. Chris will gradually take over the role of Dave Sciberras.

Jemma Ockwell – Reached Semi of the British Closed U13
Rachael Foster, Anna Bradley and Brogan Lane all competed at the British Closed.

Adrian Waller reached the Final of the U17 British Closed and lost to Joe Lee.

Good to see Juniors feeding into the Senior Team. The recent Mens County team contained Neil and Adrian Waller and Jon Fuller all still Juniors. Adam Fuller and Dave Beattie have both played Herts juniors before moving up. Well done to you all.

Date of next meeting – Monday 5th December