Birmingham Athletic Club Hosts National Junior Squash Tournament

More than 100 of the nation's best junior squash players will compete this weekend in Michigan's only U.S. Squash-sanctioned juniors squash tournament at the Birmingham Athletic Club (BAC) in Bloomfield Hills.

The DeRoy Junior Open will match players from across the Midwest as well as Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The tournament includes 10 coed age divisions: youths under 11, under 13, under 15, under 17 and youth under 19 years old. This is a U.S. Squash-sanctioned "Junior Gold" tournament, for national ranking purposes.

The tournament will kick off today and conclude on Sunday.

The BAC is fielding 20 of its own junior players, four of whom are nationally ranked among the top 20 for their age divisions. Sisters Aryanna and Tatyanna Dadabbo of Bloomfield Hills are seeded number one for the girls under 13 and girls under 15 divisions, respectively.

"I've been playing since I was 8 years old and I love the sport," said Tatyanna Dadabbo, who is ranked 13th nationally in the girls under 15 division. The freshman at Marian High School also played freshman volleyball this fall and plans to play tennis in the spring. But she admits that squash is a different sport, and perhaps the one she has excelled in at the most.

"It's different because the others sports I play (including softball) are team-based sports, but with squash it's just you and (your opponent) out there," Dadabbo said.

She practices twice per week with her coach, BAC Director of Squash Julian Wellings. Dadabbo also tries to play as often as three to five matches per week against top local competition, which usually is against boys her age or older, or adults.

Squash is a racquet sport played by two players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow rubber ball. Points are earned after each rally. The first player to earn 11 points (or win by two points after reaching a 10 to 10 score) wins the game. A player must win three of five games to win the match.

Squash is one of the fastest growing collegiate sports, and is known to be the hardest workout in racquet sports. Forbes magazine recently praised squash as the world's healthiest sport—better than swimming, running and cycling.

The ball that is non-pressurized, forcing the players to cover more of the court and bend down to play their shots, Wellings said.

"It requires more movement and offers less time for the player to react," Wellings said. "And it requires a lot more running because of that. It requires fast hands and is very challenging."

At the collegiate level, many of the Ivy League schools are the sport's biggest powers, said Wellings, a 10-year player on the Pro Squash Tour from 1991-2001.

"It's popular all over the world but right now the biggest power in terms of producing the highest number of world-class players is Egypt," Wellings said.

Dadabbo competes in around six junior tournaments each year nationally, and will take part in the U.S. Open for juniors next month at Harvard University. She also plans to compete in a tournament at Princeton in the spring.

"I would love to play in college but right now I'll just see how things go and how long I want to play squash," Dadabbo said. "I do think that playing squash at an Ivy League university would be a lot of fun."

The DeRoy Junior Open has been held at the BAC, known nationally as one of the country's premier squash facilities, for many years. There are five top-quality courts there, but Wellings admits that he could use more courts because of the sport's growth in popularity.

The tournament is not open to the public. However the Motor City Open, a Pro Squash Tour event, will be held January 26-31 and will be open to the public. Patch will provide a preview and more information about that tournament as it approaches.