Jamaica Squash, formerly known as the Jamaica Squash Association, revealed its new logo to an appreciative audience last week and announced its team for the upcoming Junior Caribbean Area Squash Association Championships (CASA). The event was held at the Liguanea Club in Kingston.

Jamaica Squash President Karen Anderson says the design of the logo had been in the making for over a year. It was completed recently to the delight of the board. Extensive work was done on the brief for the logo by marketing consultant Natasha Levy while the design was done by Rajeev Venugopal, who comes from a squash-playing family.

“I think it was important for us to refresh and rebrand and keep it in line with the direction that we’re going in of you know, sport being a big business,” Anderson said. “We have to operate like a business, and that is where a lot of the organisations in squash were going, you know, operating as business, changing their names, taking out associations, and really focusing on the business side of things. Being more fiscally responsible and sustainable. And so we felt that the new logo needed to reflect that. And so that’s why we went through this entire one-year process. And what we have here and what we’ve just unveiled today is something that we are extremely proud of.

“I mean, when you see it and you have in your mind what it looks like, and you love it, you don’t know if everybody else is going to love it, but everybody that I’ve shown it to just absolutely loves it and they get it, so we’re excited about it. When we were doing it, we always talked about something with movement. So whether it was movement of the racket, movement of the ball, or maybe a physical person, but the hummingbird gives us that movement, you know and it has the racket in the body of the hummingbird. The ball in there also gives us and the ball is distinctive. It’s a squash ball, you know it’s a squash ball if you know squash. And so we were very excited that it’s uniquely ours.”

Turning to the team for the Junior CASA she said, “Well, the team is going off to the Cayman Islands, June 28 to July 5, for the Caribbean Junior Championships, Junior CASA, and it may not be one of our stronger teams going because we don’t have everybody in every age group, but whoever are going have worked really hard throughout the year to really try and make this team. And so we’re very excited at the team that’s going and looking at them executing on the day, and it’s a long slog because you now have individuals first for the first three days and then you have team matches for the next four days or three days, so it’s a really tough competition. But you know, they worked hard, and if you put in the work, then you’ll get the results, you know, especially on the day. So it’s just for them to execute.”

Captain Sanjana Nalapati was upbeat about her expectations for herself and the team.

“So for me personally, I would really like to go out there, take home the gold for Under-19 girls, as well as take home the gold for the women’s doubles,” she said. “And in regards to the team, I honestly hope that we can all play extremely well, our best squash at 100 per cent, be there to support each other [and] hopefully do very well as a team altogether. Jamaica has had some tough battles in the past, overall, to come into the top three but we’ve been very close; we come fourth but I’m sure we can do it this time.

“I mean myself, obviously, I want to perform really well but also I think, I honestly think everyone on the team has their own abilities on that court and they will do extremely well, but for the more experienced players, I think Mehar Trahan can do pretty very well, Elle Wilson also. Mehar and Elle played each other in the U-17 finals last year. And then also Ethan Miller, it’s his second CASA (and) I believe that he’s putting a lot of effort and a lot of work so I definitely think that this CASA will show some of that.”

TEAMS:

Boys — Ethan Miller, Max Hanzell, Govind Venugopal, Cole Brown, Judah Tavares-Finson, Jaden Emery, Devedra Stoddart

Girls — Sanjana Nalapati, Mehar Trehan, Elle Wilson, Priya Stodart, Rihana Stoddart, Varenya Singh, Hinal, Lohana, Isabelle Robinson, Marley Price.