Jamaica Squash, formerly known as the Jamaica Squash Association, revealed its new logo to an appreciative audience at the Liguanea Club in Kingston last week as well as announced its team for the upcoming Junior Caribbean Area Squash Association Championships.

According to Karen Anderson, President of Jamaica Squash, the design of the logo had been in the making for over a year and was recently completed, to the delight of the board.

Extensive work was done on the brief for the logo by marketing consultant Natasha Levy while the design was done by Dr. Rajeev Venugopal who comes from a squash playing family. 

"I think it was important for us to refresh and rebrand and keep it in line with the direction that we're going in of you know, sport being a big business. We have to operate like a business, and that is where a lot of the organizations in squash were going, you know, operating as business, changing their names, taking out associations, and really focusing on the business side of things. Being more fiscally responsible and sustainable. And so, we felt that the new logo needed to reflect that. That's why we went through this entire one-year process. What we have here and what we've just unveiled today is something that we are extremely proud of," she said. 

"I mean, when you see it and you have in your mind what it looks like, and you love it, you don't know if everybody else is going to love it, but everybody that I've shown it to just absolutely loves it and they get it, so we're excited about it. When we were doing it, we always talk about something with movement. So, whether it was movement of the racket, movement of the ball, or maybe a physical person but the hummingbird gives us that movement, you know and it has the racket in the body of the hummingbird. The ball in there also gives us and the ball is distinctive. It's a squash ball, you know it's a squash ball if you know squash. We're very excited that it's uniquely ours," added Anderson. 

She then turned her attention to the team for the Junior Caribbean Area Squash Association championships (CASA).

“The team is going off to the Cayman Islands, June 28th to July 5th, for the Caribbean Junior Championships, Junior CASA, and it may not be one of our stronger teams going because we don't have everybody in every age group, but whoever are going have worked really hard throughout the year to really try and make this team,” she said.

“We're very excited at the team that's going and looking at them executing on the day, and it's a long slog because you know have individuals first for the first three days and then you have team matches for the next four days or three days, so it's a really tough competition. But, you know, they worked hard, and if you put in the work, then you'll get the results, you know, especially on the day. It's just for them to execute," she added. 

Team captain Sanjana Nalapati was upbeat about her expectations for herself and the team.

“I would really like to go out there, take home the gold for under 19 girls, as well as take home the gold for the women's doubles. In regards to the team, I honestly hope that we can all play extremely well, our best squash at 100%, be there to support each other [and] hopefully do very well as a team altogether. Jamaica has had some tough battles in the past overall to come into the top three, but we've been very close, we come fourth but I'm sure we can do it this time," she said. 

“I mean myself obviously, I want to perform really well but also I think, I honestly think everyone on the team has their own abilities on that court and they will do extremely well, but for the more experienced players, I think Mehar Trahan can do pretty very well, Elle Wilson also. Mehar and Elle played each other in the U17 finals last year. And then also Ethan Miller, it's his second Casa I believe but he's putting a lot of effort and a lot of work so I definitely think that this CASA will show some of that," she added.

The full team reads: Boys - Ethan Miller, Max Hanzell, Govind Venugopal, Cole Brown, Judah Tavares-Finson, Jaden Emery, Devedra Stpddart, amd Girl’s – Sanjana Nalapati, Mehar Trehan, Elle Wilson, Priya Stodart, Rihana Stoddart, Varenya Singh, Hinal Lohana, Isabelle Robinson, and Marley Price.