New Canaan High School Squash Teams Shine at National Championships

[This article has been submitted by theNew Canaan High School squash team.]

The New Canaan High School Boys and Girls squash teams competed at the U.S. High School Team Squash Championships the weekend of Feb 6-8. According to U.S. Squash, this is the largest team squash event in the world and included 167 teams and 1,448 players representing 13 states. Nearly 2,100 individual and 300 team matches were played across 12 divisions at venues in Connecticut, including Avon Old Farms School, Loomis Chaffee School, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Westminster School. The NCHS Boys Varsity A team is composed of Grayson Bubrosky, Killian Bubrosky, Hal Holappa, Christian Megherby, Kyle Finnican, Will Gruseke, and Sam Havens. The team finished 11th in Division ll which ranks them the #27 high school team in the nation and the #2 public school team in the country right after HLM (Harriton and Lower Merion High Schools combined team) of Pennsylvania.

New Canaan High School Squash Sending Four Teams to National Championships

The U.S. High School Team Squash Championships will be held this weekend, Feb. 6 to 8, in the Hartford area. At venues such as Trinity College and Wesleyan University, some 100 boys teams and 70 girls teams from around the nation gather each winter for this tournament, which determines the best high school squash teams in the United States. Last year, New Canaan High School boys varsity squash ranked as the #2 public high school squash team in the United States. This year at Nationals, the NCHS Varsity Boys A team is the highest seeded public school squashteam and will be competing in Division 2.

NCHS Boy’s Varsity A Squash Falls to Darien, Eyes Championship Tournament

[This game summary is supplied by the NCHS Varsity A Squash team.]

On Wednesday, January. 28, the Boy’s Varsity A squash team played Darien High School at Chelsea Piers in Stamford. Missing a player who was out sick, the ladder shifted slightly and the team had their first defeat of the season:

Grayson Bubrosky (#1) played Harrison Gill and in a very close match which included many long rallies, lost 6-11, 11-6, 11-5, 6-11, 10-12. Hal Holappa (#2), recently returning to play after an injury, played Toby Hansford and was defeated 4-11, 8-11, 5-11. Christian Megherby (#3) played Connor Wind and lost 2-11, 3-11,8-11.

NCHS Boys Varsity Squash Sweeps Rye; Next Up: Darien

[Editor’s Note: This information is supplied by the New Canaan High School Squash team.]

The NCHS Boys Varsity A team faced off against Rye High School on Wednesday, Jan. 21. The boys defeated Rye without giving up any games:

Killian Bubrosky, playing #1, defeated Spencer Hunt 11-4, 11-6, 11-0. Hal Holappa in the #2 spot, played John DiPalma and won 12-10, 11-4, 11-2. Christian Megherby at #3, beat Charlie Flynn 11-7, 11-5, 11-6.

NCHS Squash Team Funding Nixed as Board of Ed Proposes 4.87% Spending Increase

Saying the district should prioritize the hiring of additional classroom teachers and hold off on funding varsity club sports until there’s a well-defined policy in place for doing so, the Board of Education on Monday proposed a 2015-16 operating budget that includes no money for the New Canaan High School Squash Team. The $84,809,121 proposed operating budget is the major driver of the spending on the public schools, which in turn drives about two-thirds of all town spending. The school board said it’s deferring about $255,000 in spending on educators such as a part-time writing teacher at West School, student deans at the elementary schools and three general education teaching assistants. For Board of Ed Secretary Dionna Carlson, while increased participation in extracurricular activities such as squash is a “wonderful” goal, “I think we need to prioritize where the dollars are, and I would probably say I would prefer to see that $20,000 spent on a writing specialist right now.”

“And I think maybe we are putting cart the before the horse, and maybe we should have a policy in place of how we can handle these extracurricular activities and then we fund them—instead of putting a pool there without a policy that we are reviewing as a board,” Carlson said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “I think we have bigger things that we are not funding this year which are disappointing, I am sure, to many parents in the district.