Omar Samad

Wow, what an amazing trip., I didnt know what to expect really this time my last experience in Vancouver wasnt the greatest due to alot of stuff going on in my mind at the time but this was just great. I felt a bit like Paris Hilton actually being as it was my birthday when I hopped on the plane, and we stopped in Calgary for about an hour, and then onto Vancouver.. soooo that means I was partying in 3 time zones!!

But the tournament and partying was great, but even more fun for me was reconnecting with my good friend Sigrid, whom I met in Buenos Aeries , and whom so kindly invited me to her lovely house in North Vancouver. For me I was actually going through a lot of weird thoughts about this girl thats been in my life, and just talking to her about everything was so therapeutic for me it explains why im feeling so good right now looking back on it. But besides that, had WAY too much fun.

Theres a funny story too about my dress shoes, that I absolutely must share.. after the banquet i crashed over at some buddies place, and in the morning i got up and went back to my friends place eventually, and we actually planned to go out for dinner to a nice place so i thought what the heck might as well put on my dress shoes..and so we get there and sat at our table, and i crossed my legs for a minute, and looked at my shoes .. and i turned up to my friend and said .. these arent my shoes.

and that was just it, she actually lost it laughing so hard, and that was more than enough for me too I couldn’t control it either anymore everyone started turning their heads to see what was so funny, and we got a lot of interesting looks but as we all know that only makes it funnier !!! muah!!

SO btw, one thing I do have to talk about is the squash, I actually did the best I could at the time so im happy with it, unfortunatly I had an injury coming into the tournament but, I played great considering and rattled some cages and won a match too! BUT! my good good friend and ex training partner had a much better result, winning the WOMENS OPEN!!!! I couldnt even explain how happy it made me feel to see that, I was actually crying a bit when she did it! and it was an honour to be there.

OK so maybe things didnt go according to plan.. but I still did awesome personally in singles and awesome in doubles with my partner.

So in the first round I was matched up with a Racketlon veteran Hannes, a German, and he was solid player indeed, his specialty was tennis, and when we played I only needed 8 points to win the match, but i only got 6, losing the match by 2 points!! I was pretty bummed out about that but decided to not let it get the best of me, and look forward to the next day.

So we had our first mixed doubles match earlier in the day, and we won that pretty easily, and then shortly after that was my singles consolation match semi finals. (I had a bye), but this was a guy from Montreal and a really competitive guy, and really good at badminton. So he was pretty good at table tennis also, and I beat him 21-14, and then came badminton and just wow he was amazing, i was struggaling to get a racket on the ball, but i did manage to get one point! a cross court smash, that he wasnt even close to! I smashed him in squash, but made a couple mistakes, and going into tennis i needed to beat him by 2 points, which was very doable in my mind. So the whole match through it was pretty even, id be up by a couple points, or he would. Eventually landing up with a scoreline of 19-19, and just wow, my favourite part of the match where everything is on the line for these next couple points, im not sure what it was that stuck in my mind that made me feel completely at ease or what, but i was totally relaxed. He was serving and didnt deal with the pressure that well, with a double fault leaving a score of 19-20 for me, and then i guess feeling a little shaky with his serve he hit a serve that just floated over the net, I smiled and ran up and hit one of my favourite shots a down the line forehand, with the perfect amount of pace on the ball and all he could do was watch it go by Samad wins!! So turning around I realized that everyone in the club was watching this match, and being rained on with cheers and applauses as we walked off the court, the Umpire came up to me and said he was really glad I beat that guy, he was one of those guys that doesnt smile, and is too serious, just not fun! and for some reason the club crowd was loving me!! and a big high five from my partner Ally!!

I won the finals pretty easily, the thing that I liked about the finals was that I beat this table tennis coach in table tennis, and he was furious with himself., just furious!! lol and we actually had to play the guy I beat and his partner that Allison beat in mixed doubles, so we beat them pretty easily too to jump into the finals, eventually losing a heartbreaker by 2 points in the end, this time at 18-18 we couldnt pull it off ;( but another time most definatly.

I got talked into staying around for the Vancouver Island Squash tournament next weekend at the same club, so I re-arranged my flight to suit it, and am looking forward to it quite a bit.