BIRMINGHAM, England — President of the Jamaica Squash Association, Karen Anderson is hoping to secure more international experience for the island’s most promising talent, and is confident that the performances of Chris Binnie and Julian Morrison at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, will serve the sport well going forward.

Binnie made it to the round of 16 in the men’s singles competition in Birmingham, losing to world number 26-ranked Adrian Waller (England) on Sunday, while Morrison, who lost his first-round contest to Pakistan’s Nasir Iqbal, has since made impressive progress in the plate tournament and will face Zambia’s Kundanji Kalengo today at 4:45 pm for a spot in the men’s single plate final.

“Chris reaching the round of 16, again, is huge for us. He’s the only Caribbean member here who is at the round of 16 and we have other teams, other Caribbean countries, who have more persons playing than us, you know. And for him to be the last man standing and holding up and waving the flag — not just for Jamaica, but for the Caribbean — is huge,” Anderson told the Jamaica Observer. “Last time we had two players who reached the Round 16 so Chris is showing his consistency and the work that he’s been putting in over the years, and we’re very excited.”

“We’re proud of Julian.; this is his first international. He has played at Pan Am before but the Pan Am is nothing like this. He has a skill set; it’s now for him to understand what the level is. It’s the first time he’s actually seeing squash live at this level and it’s a whole other ball game, it’s a whole different level, and we’re hoping that what will happen is that it will now propel him and propel the others to really try and reach up to that next level.

Anderson, a 13-time national champion, added that the association will also be focusing on attracting more females to squash and increasing the general access and interest in the sport in Jamaica.

“In terms of my plans, clearly one of them is to grow the sport, certainly at the grass roots level; we just don’t have enough people playing the sport and knowing about the sport. So, you have to have the eyes and the ears and the bodies playing the sport — we don’t have that right now — so that’s definitely one area that we’re looking to improve upon,” said Anderson.

“Also, just from a playing [at the] competitive level, I think that we just need to have more players on the international scene competing. It’s about an opportunity. We just don’t have enough opportunity to play at this high level and we don’t have enough of that at home. So we need to get the guys on the international scene, playing at this level, giving them that opportunity to understand what it is to compete at this level, and then I think that you’ll find that the level of the sport will improve,” said Anderson before speaking specifically to the need to improve the level of play and participation among female players.

“Now, where I think we’re finding the real challenge is with the women — and we have a nice crop of juniors who are excited about the game and really looking forward to taking it to the next level. They say that’s what they want to do [so] let’s see if they’re really willing to put in the work [as] it’s a tough sport. We’re going to really try and focus our next few tournaments and really try and get them up to speed,” declared Anderson.

Binnie and Morrison will team up for the doubles competition which is scheduled to begin tomorrow.

— Andre Lowe