It was a fair start for the T&T's play­ers on the open­ing day at the Caribbean Area Squash As­so­ci­a­tion (CASA) Cham­pi­onships in the British Vir­gin Is­lands Sun­day, but coach­es Ryan Jages­sar and Rhea Khan will have some work to do.

From the 10 play­ers that took the court in the morn­ing pe­ri­od, there were five wins and as many loss­es. New­com­ers Jor­dan Alexan­der-Smith and Evan Ghu­ran had a bap­tism of fire in their open­ing match­es, each suc­cumb­ing to con­vinc­ing 3-0 de­feats, re­spec­tive­ly.

Alexan­der-Smith, fac­ing Bar­ba­dos' Sa­vante Pad­more in the boys Un­der-11 di­vi­sion, was brushed aside 11-5, 11-5, 11-2, while Ghu­ran, the younger broth­er of two-time re­gion­al U-11 cham­pi­on Gia Ghu­ran, fought hard but fell to a sim­i­lar 3-0 loss 12-10, 11-8, 11-9 in the same boys U-11 di­vi­sion.

How­ev­er, two oth­er new­com­ers for T&T Saan­vi Chat­ter­goon and her broth­er Vitha­la Chat­ter­goon had maid­en wins against Guyana's Alex­is Ar­joon in the girls U-11 and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines' Ethan Web­ster in the boys U-13.

Chat­ter­goon won the first set 11-3 for a 1-0 ad­van­tage be­fore the Guyanese stormed back to lev­el the scores at one apiece, win­ning 13-11. Lat­er though, Chat­ter­goon re­stored the one-game ad­van­tage with an 11-9 tri­umph in the third set for a 3-1 lead, and she lat­er sealed the win in the fourth set by pre­vail­ing 11-7.

Chat­ter­goon's broth­er wast­ed lit­tle time in dis­pos­ing of Web­ster 11-5, 11-9, 11-9 for a per­fect start to the main draw.

Mean­while, Aaniyah Ramdeen al­so carved out a vic­to­ry in her con­test with El­la Grif­fith of Bar­ba­dos in the girls' U-11 di­vi­sion. Af­ter an 11-5 tri­umph in the first set, the T&T ace en­sured there were no come­backs by beat­ing her coun­ter­part 11-0, 11-5 for a con­vinc­ing 3-0 vic­to­ry to get her cam­paign off to a per­fect start as well.

How­ev­er, there was not much luck for Co­en Mack in the boys' U-13, fac­ing James Bigley of Bermu­da. Mack eeked out an open­ing game win of the first set 11-8, but Bigley came back in the sec­ond set, whip­ping the Trin­bag­on­ian 11-6 to knot up the scores at one each.

But in the fluc­tu­at­ing af­fair, Mack took the ad­van­tage for a sec­ond time when he held off Bigley by an­oth­er 11-8 mar­gin be­fore his coun­ter­part came back 11-5 to force a fifth and de­cid­ing set, with the score at 2-2. In the de­cider, how­ev­er, Bigley pre­vailed 11-6 to clinch the win 3-2.

Ross D'Ju­ran and Nicholas Lequay were the oth­er win­ners for T&T in the ear­ly morn­ing ses­sion. D'Ju­ran tri­umphed over Ja­maica's Max Hen­zell 3-0 (11-2, 11-5, 11-6) in the boys U-15, and Lequay clob­bered Malachi Mc Mas­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines in straight sets 3-0 (11-5, 11-5, 11-9) in the boys U-17 di­vi­sion.

Oth­er­wise, the oth­er T&T play­ers who took the courts - Yohann Mar­chock (boys U-17) and San­jiv Mun­gal (boys U-17) per­ished against Shiloh As­re­ga­do of Guyana and Eli Car­pol of Bermu­da, re­spec­tive­ly.

Mar­chock went down 1-3 (11-6, 9-11, 12-10, 12-10) and Mun­gal was beat­en 3-0 (11-3, 11-5, 11-7).