WARNING: LONG BLOG ENTRY!
...apologies in advance if you were in the middle of something!

Dear blog and all of you that have been following and waiting for this entry,

I am sorry we haven't written to you in a while - we have had a hectic few days which are now over - unfortunately!!!

I'll start from the beginning (Day one of the tournament) we all have to take different buses to the club due to our different game times - Bryce with the early game left on a brutal 7.30am bus with Anthony to make the 40 minute journey to the club for his 9am start against Canadian Arjun Gupta - a battle which he unfortunately lost in a close 3 - the altitude proving a little much against a really tough drawn out first round opponent.

Next up was me at 11.15 - I managed to come out on top with a convincing win over Daniel Prato from Venezuela - a good confidence booster leading into my next round against one of Pakistan's top juniors Farhan Zahman in the afternoon...

Even managed to get interviewed for Ecuador TV - had to talk really slow so they understood me!! NZ is now on the map in Ecuador...

Paul played a young Ecuadorian guy Sebastian Larrea and won in 3, pretty convincingly leading him through to the next round in the afternoon - against 3rd seed Lucas Serme from France.

Lance got to have a good sleep in (good stuff Lance!) and caught a 2pm bus for his 4.30 game in the afternoon for his second round tussle with Kuwait number one Yousef Saleh.

Bryce was up first for his first round of the plate against German Simon Vaclahovsky - a really tough battle which he unfortunately after 2 0 up - (dominating) ran out of steam with the altitude and just missed out on the win - another tough draw even for the plate when we looked around to see some of the other games on. He worked really hard and was unlucky not to come out with the win.

Lance was up next and took out Yousuf Saleh from Kuwait in straight games, the Kuwaiti was fit and a fighter but Lance proved too strong - fighting back as he does from 10 8 down in the second to break the guys spirits to take the third comfortably. Well done Lance for moving into round 3, into the top 32 in the world!

I played next, getting on against Pakistani Farhan Zahman and having a good warm up - unfortunately though the pace was intense, never having played or seen a Paki play, it was just too fast and I couldn't keep it up and ended up losing 3 0 - luckily enough he is still in the final 8 - I'll be cheering for him, just so that I can say I lost to the winner!! Unfortunately into the classic plate for me.

Paul then went on (it was quite good how it worked, we played one after another which meant we could all have Anthony for each game - which was handy, we could have all been scheduled on at the same time!) to play talented young Frenchman Lucas Serme who (after some huge, close rallies!) managed to get there 3 0 to put Paul and I in the same boat going into the classic plate - up to Lance to keep flying the individual flag for New Zealand against Aditya Jagtap from India.

Wednesday night marked the night of the Opening Ceremony - and we were pretty unsure about it - seemed like a weird idea to have it on the first night of play - after two rounds there were only 32 people left in the main draw which you can imagine makes for some upset players - a couple of upsets throughout the day and big games such as (unluckily) unseeded Andrew Schnell, Canada's number one player vs Mohammed El Sherbini from Egypt - a battle that Sherbini came out on top of in a close 4 - was the first real tight game we got to watch and it was of a huge standard - was great to see.

The opening ceremony consisted of all the countries dressing up (I must admit we looked pretty swish - unfortunately didn't have a camera with a memory card with us so can't upload the photos that we took during the night without a cord) and getting in a line and then walking through to the event room while getting photos taken - kind of like the countries at the Olympics opening ceremony - just with less people and unfortunately (coz we weren't in NZ!) hundreds of thousands of people taking photos of us! Was a good night though, heard some speeches, had some food, drinks (non alcoholic obviously) and chats with other teams etc.

As soon as it finished, we bolted to the first bus (it was about 10.30, 11pm by this stage and we are tired as) and got on and then left for hotel - thankfully didn't have to wait around too long. Got no idea what time our games are the next day yet - they hadn't done the draw for the Classic Plate that Paul and I were in or the Conso plate that Bryce was in - all we knew is that Lance was playing at 12:45 I think, till the next morning...

We set a time to wake up and Anthony rang us then and said could go back to sleep coz we did have enough time - weren't playing til 12! (thanks organisers for the notice) didn't know who playing or anything either - makes for a pretty rough preparation for a game.

Paul started it off against Andrew Schnell - probably the toughest guy in the classic plate (I mentioned him just before, lost to Sherbini - if I can add an entry from today (which is Friday) this guy is down to the last 4 in the Classic plate and I don't think he has dropped a set apart from the one that he lost to Paul in this game - was a close 4, unfortunately Paul just missed out on the win - was a massive rally in the 4th that I can't really explain but it involved a ridiculous amount of running and retrieving on Pauls part - and at the end of it he was absolutely stuffed! Was a good effort though - everyone would agree!

Straight after this, Lance is on against Indian 6th seed Aditya Jagtap for his spot in the last 16 - which I missed (see below why..) but Lance didn't quite make it - close scores but unfortunately no result today - was pretty disappointing for Lance and for all of us, we all wanted him to do well :( so day 2 is getting pretty depressing so far!

At the same time as Lance's match, and the reason I wasn't there supporting him is because we had a game time clash! I had to play the top player from Wales Sam Fenwick - and lost in 3 (I'm gonna blame Bryce's coaching in between games... joking, thanks Bryce I did appreciate it sorry I couldn't win for you!). Was mega close and I probably should of got there but was one of those days - so that was me out as well - now all that is left is to get ourselves amped for teams which we are all really excited about - its what we came for!

Pretty upsetting for the boys to be all out of the tournament, but Bryce still had a game to come at 3ish against a Welsh boy as well. Unfortunately he battled out another huge five setter - and managed to lose in a really close tussle that could have gone either way - so the guys were all a bit down - but time to refocus now for teams event, do a bit of training and watch some good squash! Fortunately the South African ref had a soft spot for Bryce and her words are that "he has the biggest heart she has ever seen" - so thats positive! I'll try and get a photo of them together in the next couple of days so watch this space!!!!

OTHER SQUASH MATCHES! Have been pretty decent! It's great to watch real good match ups - some of the highlight matches so far were Nick Sachvie from Canada (17-32 seed) take out 5th seeded Danish Atlas Khan of Pakistan in a massive 5 set grueller - was a gutsy effort and great to watch!! Charles Sharpes of England vs Egyptian (Sherin, can't remember first names!) in the last 16 games to make the final 8 as well - which Charles Sharpes took out in 4. Today (Friday - day 3 of competition) we went to the big shopping centre (it really is big...) and watched the quarter finals on the glass court. The end result being 3 Egyptians in the top 4 and one Pakistani - the guy that beat me - the other survivor.

• (1) Amr Khaled Khalifa def Aditya Jagtap of India 3 - 0
• (9-16) Marwan el Shorbagy (brother of Mohammed el Shorbagy - 2008 and 2009 winner) def (17-32) Ali Ashraf El Karargy of Egypt 3 - 0
• (9-16) Farhan Zaman (Pakistan) def (17-32) Mohammed El Sherbini (Egypt) 3 - 1
  
• (2) Ali Farag def (8) Charles Sharpes (England) 3 - 0

Funny story time, this made me not understand why we chose to go up the cable cars - thanks Ecuador engineering! Where the glass court is in the mall (it's 4 stories) there is a stand behind it for people to sit and watch the game - quite a small gallery but it's all good - anyhow we were sitting in the gallery and it's pretty rickety - untill between the 3rd and 4th match (after Zaman and Sherbini played - as Sharpes and Farag were warming up) we heard a big bang and a massive squeal/screams... me and Bryce are thinking OH NO, someone has fallen through (it's pretty high) and everyones just bolted off the seats in a matter of seconds...

Turns out no one was hurt - but the steel beam that was holding up one side snapped in half and folded over onto itself so all the seats caved in and were lucky not to just snap completely. I took some photos of the mayhem!!!

Everyone got to watch the end of the game from around the different levels of the mall - luckily the referees still got a seat...

Well, that's all I have for now. Tomorrow is going to be a big day - training at 10.30am and then again at 4.30 and we were thinking to mix it up in between we are going to do the thing that you would expect anyone coming to Ecuador would want to do at some stage - going to see the centre of the earth!! There is a spot 20 minutes from the club we are playing at just out of Quito where there is ZERO longitude, and ZERO lattitude - this is known as the dead centre of the earth!! It is also (obviously) on the equator so we will be able to stand on the equator. Really looking forward to the experience - on one side, the water apparently goes one way, on the other side, the water spins the other way! Weirdly enough... in the middle it goes straight down! I'm not sure how it works, but I'll try get photos.

I'll also try be on this more to update more regularly, sorry to keep you all waiting, this one has been a long time in the making!!!

Hope you aren't all too upset with us losing - we were all disappointed but we can only refocus now on teams event - seedings are done tomorrow so fingers crossed everything goes well for us, we'll see how everything pans out and let you know.

Thanks very much, and thanks for reading if you have made it this far...............
:)

It's bedtime over here so I can't say much, only that I'll update more tomorrow - internet was down yesterday but I shall do my best to catch up. First games in the morning, had a team talk tonight and a "cocktail" party (don't worry, no cocktails..) to informally welcome us all and wish us luck - tomorrow night is opening ceremony as well.

Bryce is up first so think of him and all of us if you want before you go to sleep coz when you wake up, hopefully we are all through to round 2.

Quick update on something that has changed - 2 people withdrew from the draw last minute and they altered it so that Lance has a bye now instead of a Venezuelan - so he is AUTOMATICALLY through to the top 64, well done Lance! Well played mate, good job! So his first game is at 4pm here if I remember - which is 9am NZ time on Thursday.

Cheers guys

Day 3

_____________

Wednesday - 1st Round Games (Round of 128)

• Bryce - 9:00am vs Arjun Gupta (Canada) (2am Thursday)
  
• Lance - 9.45am vs Alejandro Suarez (Venezuela) (2.45am Thursday)
  
• Michael - 11:15am vs Daniel Prato (Venezuela) (4:15am Thursday)
  
• Paul - 12:45pm vs Sebastian Larrea (Ecuador) (5:45am Thursday)

Make sure you are all awake, ok?

Today we had a gym session which quickly turned into a court sprint session again as the treadmills didn't work properly - which was all good. Worked really really hard - here's some photos of us going!

Just to show how hard altitude is/how hard we are pushing it up here - I've been made to upload a flattering photo that you don't have to look at if you don't want... (Don't look at it!) thanks Anthony for the photography! Was a tough session!!! Getting stronger though each time...

Who's that?!?

Went down for another training session after a couple of hours resting, at the club - was tough work, but only our second games we've played here so it'll definitely get easier to play! Watched some other teams again - it's quite cool coming from NZ and not getting out too much to see all the different styles of the game!!! Each country has their own unique styles and tactics - is going to make for interesting games, I think!

Not too much else to report - went and had steak for dinner... Not sure if anyone wanted to know that but it was good!

Tomorrow we are playing USA (a friendly match) just to get us in amongst some other players and get used to playing different styles and (hopefully) winning! Should be good, we are all looking forward to the little challenge! So many different people here which is pretty cool.

Still amazed at the lack of care taken to do with road rules - no one indicates, everyone speeds, red lights just make it more fun for drivers (I think)... Interesting place :) enjoying it!

Will report again tomorrow, thanks for reading!
Cheers

Day 2
___________

Straight into the court sprints after breakfast this morning, had a hitting session just doing drills and trying to get the timing right, then did some running which we all struggled with a little bit, getting used to the burn in the lungs (it's such a great feeling!). It was a good session, even though it was hard - can feel ourselves getting stronger and more used to it already! The court we used was on the Penthouse floor of the second tower of our hotel - there's a swimming pool and a gym up there as well as the penthouse! Here's a photo of the court, that we all found pretty funny... Don't try and hit a corkscrew! (Take a look at the top left hand side of the front wall...)

Was a pretty uneventful day aside from the hitting (which is what we are here to do so that works out ok!), we just came downstairs and had lunch... the food at the restaraunt here is pretty good - all the food in Ecuador isn't actually too bad, we haven't found anything too repulsive yet!

After a couple of hours of lunch/downtime we headed off to the club again for our practise session (each team gets 2 hours per day of practice times at the competition venue) where we just played some matches, Paul vs Lance and Michael vs Bryce. Michael and Lance came out on top for today in 5, but far out, they were reallly hard, the altitude makes a few rallies seem like a whole match - get tired pretty quickly. Getting better though already I think, we will be good as normal soon! The court we played on (we didn't get a photo of it unfortunately) had a wooden plank (about 50cm x 50cm) on the front wall on the forehand side about halfway between the service line and the tin - they are covering up a hole they are going to reseal - but every time we hit the plank we had to play a let on the ball coz it was just bouncing crazy!!!

Watched some other teams training and everyone looks alright, we think we can take them though!! Not really too sure yet where everyone stands, just getting a feel for how things are looking for a start so yeah.

Back to the hotel for dinner and a relaxing night doing nothing - however got one last photo of doing the washing today... unfortunately, we can't find a laundry so we did our washing today by use of the bathtub and some water/washing powder! We also made a swear jar up which consists of any word that could be negative pretty much - so its $1 US if anyone swears!!! (Not that any of us will or do) but I can say that Bryce got off to a flying start... cheers mate!

Our Spanish is starting to get really good now, we are almost fluent!
So, adios for now, buenos noches...gracias... that's about all we have got so far, si!
Hope everyone back home is well :)

Cheers (more tomorrow!) - PS: PLAY STARTS ON TUESDAY - (will add our times in tomorrow)

Day 1
_______________

Woke up and had breakfast - then headed straight off to Quito Tenis y Golf Club for our first training session at altitude. Jumped in a taxi outside the hotel - found out the club is about half an hour away from the hotel (we were thinking, oh no, it's gonna cost heaps for a taxi...) which cost us $6 (USD). Really cheap - but crazy drivers! People all over the road, tooting everywhere, getting through tiny gaps and it was weird because all the roads are the opposite way round, driving on the right!
Facilities are pretty good - squash courts are nice but FAR OUT - never seen a ball bounce how it does here, and they even give us special altitude balls. Was pretty weird jumping on the court and starting to hit, trying to time the ball right when it is so fast took a bit of getting used to but it's good conditions for the way we want to play - really easy to make mistakes as got to aim so low on the front wall so if we can eliminate mistakes from our game, our opponents will make them for us. Can see some really tough battles coming on - so hard to get winners so rallies will just go on and in the end it could come down to who is the most mentally tough as to who wins matches.

Altitude is the weirdest thing - it still feels the same to breathe (it's not like there's no oxygen) but once you start moving around a bit it starts to get tough. Anthony says we will adapt and it'll be just like normal after a few days - can't wait for that coz we all got the lungs going doing rotating drives/tramways today!


Anthony had a game as well - getting straight into the altitude! We might try get away with passing him off as a member of the team...

The rest of our day was spent going up to the lookout at the top of the Volcano, Pichincha - 4,100m high! So we took a cable car to the top and got some amazing views of Ecuador (which is HUGE!!!) and had a good time.

That was our day - apart from that we went to the supermarket etc, enjoying Ecuador so far - will update tomorrow!

The Flight

_____________

Well well, we got to the Hotel 24 hours after leaving Auckland Airport on Thursday (somehow it was only 9pm here and we had left at 5pm... who knows!) - an extremely long 24 hours considering we couldn't really sleep on the first plane (11 hour flight to Santiago, Chile) and then after spending a couple of hours wandering around Santiago airport we jumped on another plane bound for Quito, Ecuador (via Ecuador's largest city, Guyaquil) - a 7 hour journey! We promised not to sleep on this flight (even though it was about 3am NZ time if I remember) and we were absolutely knackered and struggling to keep our eyes open - the idea was that we would be tired enough to sleep through the night in Quito so we could straight away be adjusted to Ecuadorian time.A lot happened along the way - Bryce made a new friend on the plane from Auckland to Santiago...

Anthony made friends with an ex-war vet whose son was flying the plane - unfortunately we didn't get a photo with him because he got moved up to first class (pfft!).
When landed in Chile we were a bit taken back when we saw a huge mountain right next to us. Took a photo (unfortunately it was a little bit hazy which made it hard to see, but it was quite pretty!).

When we got onto the second plane, we were a bit gutted to find out that there was NO TV's in the back of the seats! It was a long journey without being able to check out the in flight entertainment - especially how tired we were, playing games would have been something that could keep us awake! There were a couple of times people started to nod off to sleep and we even got a photo of Bryce just after he passed out - he wouldn't let us put it up though (fair enough, looked terrible!).

Bryce and I (right at the back of the plane) were lucky enough to have a rockstar sitting next to us. It was pretty cool to get some insight and wisdom from him (joke). Here's a photo of him (I hope he isn't watching this blog...)


Made it to Quito (finally) and Customs at the airport has a good system - every time one of the customs officers is free, they press a button and it tells the passengers which one is free so it works fastest. HOWEVER, they decided to connect this button to a terrible loud beeping noise - everytime one of the ten officers were free we got to hear it again (after 20 hours, it wasn't nice!). Thanks Quito Airport for the headache! Here's Paul and Michael waiting in line...


Thanks for reading if you've made it this far... more soon about our first day in Ecuador!
Cheers,

Paulo, Fernando, Alejandro, Antonio and Miguel
(Paul, Bryce, Lance, Anthony and Michael)

Welcome!

Hi, welcome to our blog of the World Junior Boys Championships in Quito, Ecuador - 27th July-7th August 2010.

We are leaving tomorrow (Thursday 22nd July at 4.40pm) for 20 hours of travelling till we reach our destination where we are sure to play some amazing squash!

Be sure to check back regularly to follow our progress as the tournament goes on - about our games and what Ecuador is like! (Check the time above/posts to see what time it currently is in Ecuador, we are 17 hours behind NZ!)