Bermuda’s young squash players continued to pick up the medals as the Caribbean Junior Squash Championships came to a close on Saturday.

The island’s boys team, which was made up of Ethan Rosorea, Daniel RInger, Andrew Cox, Owen Rosorea, William Frith and Mason Smith won a bronze medal with the youngest member of the team producing a remarkable turnaround in the deciding match to ensure his team finished on the podium.

Smith came from two games down and 10-6 down to secure a win, impressing national coach Micah Franklin.

“I have to say it was all because of him that we even came in third place,” Franklin said.

“The way it works is that you play the best-of-five matches and it all came down to Mason against a 12-year-old boy from Cayman Islands for third place. Mason was two games down, so 2-0 down and 10-6 down in points in the third game. The other boy had four match balls and Mason unbelievably came back and pulled off the upset to win. I have never seen a 9-year-old do that before.”

Smith had already won a gold medal in singles competition earlier in the week to become Bermuda’s first ever under-11 champion and Franklin was pleased with the way some of his older players helped to support the youngest travellers

“The team spirit was exceptional and I can’t fault any of the players for the level of effort,” Franklin said.

I really try to promote the older guys and older girls supporting the younger ones and helping them to develop. We have a sense of camaraderie and even though squash is an individual sport, I do my best to make sure the team are all as one.

“We had 17 kids here with a large difference in ages and everybody, for the most part, has got along, been very friendly, and I’m really proud of them.”

As well as the boys team finishing third, Franklin was also pleased the girls team finished fourth and feels there is room for improvement.

“I love that we have work that we can always improve on,” he said.

“It’s important for these kids to have some goals to achieve next year. I’m happy the guys came third as much as I would have loved them to win as this gives us room to work and improve.

“Barbados and Guyana, who came first and second, there is quite a gap there between them and us, s we can go back home, back to the drawing board, work out what they are doing differently and see what we can do to step it up.

“I’m very proud of a strong third-placed finish for the boys, which was the same as last year. The girls finishing fourth was also impressive as we usually miss out on a semi-final place. For the quality of our sport and looking at the longevity of our sport with the younger ones coming up, I am over the moon happy.”