19 Oct 2015
Budapest, 19 October 2015. The Aspire Squash team enjoyed a successful trip to Budapest for the ‘Hungarian Junior Open’, the highlight being graduate student Umair Zaman winning the U19 category, defeating number 1 seeded Slovakian Matej Hrncrnik 3-1 in the final. This marked his first European Circuit victory in over 6 years and was just reward for his hard work over the past year.
In the U15 category 8th seed Waleed Zaman performed extremely well, especially in his quarter final match where he held his nerve to recover from 3-9 down in the deciding fifth game to beat the number 2 seed. Reaching the semi-finals is a fantastic achievement in his first U15 event, especially as he still has nearly two years left in the age group. In the U13 category unseeded Yousef Elsaka, undaunted by playing in his first ever European tournament, produced several excellent performances and finished a highly credible 4th place. A hugely promising start by the foundation year student and hopefully a sign of good things to come.
There were several other notable performances, with Hamad Al-Amri finishing 5th in the U17 category and Abdulaziz Al-Ishaq finishing 7th in the U15s, both beating higher ranked players on their way through. Rashid Al-Harab also played well to finish 9th in the U15 event.
Final finishing positions for each student are listed in the table below while full draws can be found on the tournament website: http://griffsquash.hu/hjo2015
| NAME |
CATEGORY |
PLAYED |
WON |
FINAL POSITION |
| UMAIR ZAMAN |
U19 |
5 |
5 |
1st |
| HAMAD AL-AMRI |
U17 |
4 |
3 |
5th |
| ABDELAZIZ OMEIRA |
U17 |
5 |
3 |
10th |
| MOHAMMED ALYAFEI |
U17 |
4 |
2 |
19th |
| WALEED ZAMAN |
U15 |
5 |
3 |
4th |
| ABDULAZIZ AL-ISHAQ |
U15 |
4 |
2 |
7th |
| RASHID AL-HARIB |
U15 |
5 |
4 |
9th |
| ALI AL-DOSARI |
U15 |
5 |
3 |
13th |
| AHMAD AL-MERAIKHI |
U15 |
5 |
2 |
29th |
| ABDULAZIZ AL-TURKI |
U15 |
4 |
0 |
31st |
| YOUSEF ELSAKA |
U13 |
4 |
2 |
4th |
| IBRAHIM AL-DARWISH |
U13 |
4 |
2 |
13th |