March 17, 2017, by Lindsay Hall

BUCS Big Wednesday team in focus: Squash

The final countdown is on to #BUCSBigWednesday, and as the teams prepare for what promises to be an exhilarating two days in Bath, we spoke to the squash team to see how they’re feeling, as three of their teams get ready to fight it out for the women’s BUCS trophy as well as the men’s and women’s championship titles.

Owain Taylor, men’s first team captain said “Our team is excited to head off to BUCS Big Wednesday (BBW), for the second year running now. We’re facing the same opponents which we narrowly lost to last year in the finals (with a 3-2 scoreline) so it’s going to be a close match. We’ve got two new players in the team this year bringing some fresh enthusiasm to the squad, and have had a great year for BUCS results in our squad with three top eight finishes in the individual championships. We’ve been training really hard with the strength and conditioning team twice a week (on top of our normal squad sessions) and we’re hoping that, although we’re the underdogs going into the final this year, we can pull off an upset!”

Hayley Openshaw, captain of the women’s first team, is looking forward to taking on new opponents University of West England and, having checked out previous results, is feeling positive about the results, “We’re so excited to be heading to BBW, especially as we have three UoN teams there, it’s going to be a great atmosphere! Team mate Hana Ramadan is this year’s BUCS individual champion so we’re going in with a really strong team. This week we’ll have two strength and conditioning sessions as well as our usual training session so we’ll be well prepared. We’re a really close team and will spend the night before in Bath just really focusing on our game and bonding as a team.”

And it’s not just the first teams looking to claim national titles, the women’s 2nd team will play Cardiff in a battle for the BUCS Trophy. Captain of the team, Ash Guerzoni said “I’m so proud of the team reaching the BUCS finals for the second year running, we’re also really excited to be going to BBW with both of the first teams. We’ll all be supporting each other and the atmosphere should be very motivating. We’re hoping to have a great match against our opponents, and although we’ve never played them before we do know some of their player so we can be prepared. With a full team, we’ll be sure to all have very tough matches but we definitely have a strong chance of winning especially with the support from the other UoN teams cheering us on. For three out of the four players this will also be their last ever BUCS match before graduating this summer so its going to be emotional.”

So, it’s a great outlook for another one of our squads – and you can follow all the action across both days via our social media channels @UoNSport. Keep up to date with how our teams are doing and don’t forget to show your support using #GreenandGold!

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