Squash master silver medal for Smith
Adam Civico
All-round racket player Joan Smith won a team silver medal in the over-45 Scottish Squash Masters home internationals at Aberdeen last month.
Currently training for the island games, Smith had earlier repeated a feat she achieved in 1993 and 1994 – winning three Shetland titles in the same year. S
he claimed the women’s badminton championship, the women’s table tennis championship and the women’s squash championship for 2015.
The Aberdeen O45 event took place at the squash and racketball club at Mannofield and Scotland’s first opponents were Wales.
Scotland’s Julia Horsburgh recorded the first victory with a 3-0 win and next up was Joan at number three against Heather Charles. She just won after a marathon match 9-0, 8-10, 10-8, 10-8.
With three more matches to be played, Scotland number one Sabine MacKenzie won a close first game and then took command and ran away with the next two games.
Next up was Fiona Morrison for Scotland at number four. This was a long match and unfortunately Fiona lost out in five sets.
The last player for Scotland at number two was Sue Strachan who won to secure an overall 4-1 victory.
Unfortunately Ireland were unable to field a team so Scotland were awarded a win.
The next match was going to be the toughest games yet, against England.
Horsburgh at number five lost in five sets and next up was Smith against recent British Open winner Diana Parums.
Smith started slowly but caught up in the first game to make it 8-8. However, Parums went on to win 10-8.
In the second game Smith again started slowly but drew level at 7-7. But Parums used her experience and managed to pull away to win 9-7 and she also took the third.
Unfortunately MacKenzie, Heather Spens and Strachan all went down, although Spens took her match to three games, which resulted in a 5-0 overall win for England.
Smith said the Scottish players were very pleased to win the silver medal and hopefully it would be a good warm-up for the island games in Jersey later this month.
