Squash

1st Round: Manor beat Rise, 30-0. Grove beat School House, 24-3. Queen',s beat Dronfield, 1-3.

Semi-finals : Grove beat Manor, 13-6. Queen's beat Temple, 25-8.

Final: Grove and Queen's drew 3 all.

Replay: Queen's beat Grove, 14-3.

Although the Christmas Term is not the main Squash term, there has been more activity than usual this year.

Apart from the 1st V matches, we were fortunate to receive two most enjoyable visits, one from Terry Pickering and Michael Grundy, two Yorkshire players, and the second from the South African Knights team, who were on a six-week tour of this country. Pickering and Grundy played an excellent exhibition game, full of delicate shots. The Knights spent a full afternoon coaching a selected number of boys and in the evening played two exhibition matches. We are extremely grateful to all these players for spending so much time at the School and for giving us opportunities of seeing a much higher standard of squash than exists near York. It was also a pleasure to see their fine sportsmanship and tremendous enthusiasm.

In the 1st V matches we did very well, winning three matches and only losing to the powerful Durham University team; we are grateful to the Durham team, whose main purpose in playing us is to try to improve the School team. The captain, J. C. Richardson, had an excellent term, winning all his matches easily. He also found time to do a great deal of valuable coaching and was a help to many players. The second string, D. R. Waller, improved enormously and was a very strong player in his position; his departure at the end of term will make a big gap in the team. J. G. Hoad and M. J. H. Fisher at Nos. 3 and 4, both found wins hard to achieve. Fisher, and to a lesser extent Hoad, have a major problem of temperament. Their disappointment with their own shortcomings tends to cause defeat more often than the skill of their opponents; both of them are better players than they themselves think. At Nos. 5 and 6, the younger players, P. L. Hall and I. Robinson, made good progress and won most of their matches well. At No. 7, P. V. Zissler played with great speed and enthusiasm; with more control he could be a difficult player to beat. Several other players have improved quite well, but there are others, who have played little and are wasting their ability; in most cases this is not because of lack of keenness, but rather because of poor organisation of spare time.

In the holidays, Richardson and Waller took part in the South of England Championships at Eastbourne. Richardson did very well to reach the semi-final, where he lost narrowly in the fifth game. Waller unfortunately had a bad draw and lost in the first round, but he had little difficulty in winning the plate competition. These two were joined in 31