By Joe Apu
Nigeria is at the verge of making a huge come back to top flight squash going by the proclamation of the President, Nigeria Squash Federation in this interview with Sunday Sun Sports.
He says that with eight Nigerians currently in the Professional Squash Association (PSA), grooming more players to play in the world circuit, the World Team Championship and importantly the British Open Championship is a goal his board is working hard to achieve anytime soon.
Oyerinde also speaks on grooming younger players but says that states have a role in ensuring that the issue of age cheats is eradicated in age grade tournaments.
Enjoy the interview.
Can we get to meet you?
Ans: My name is Boye Oyerinde, President of the Nigeria Squash Federation. In terms of sports, I have tried my hands on many sports. I played football, Table Tennis and then I got to have a taste of squash in the year 2000 and I loved it. I was used to playing Table Tennis of course with a small bat and my first attempt at squash, I was slapping the ball like I was playing Table Tennis.
Incidentally, a friend’s uncle who watched asked me if I had played squash before and I said no. He was impressed and simply told me that if I continued, I would go far. It has been amazing.
From that time I tried the game, my interest grew and I played regularly. I got to the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club and was Captain of the Squash Section. I also played at the Ikoyi Club 1938 and also made my mark at the Squash Section too.
Then I became the Tournament Director for the Lagos State Squash Association from where I became the South West representative and to my present position as President since 2017.
How would you describe your first term in office?
It was a learning process at some levels. It was satisfying knowing that I could actualize the vision I had for the game and to achieve that was gratifying. I recall that when I was the Tournament Director in Lagos State, the then Commissioner of Sports was Enitan Oshodi and remember speaking with him. He told me that I needed to do what I was doing for Lagos State at the national level.
I had a vision of what I wanted to do but how was a different ball game all together. You needed to be there to know it. There were challenges of course – meeting different people from those you already know and understand.
At the national level, there were people of different mind sets, objectives (though common goals).
What were those challenges?
When you seat on the fence or you are on the outside of a place, you have a mind set of how you think thing should be done. But when you get in there, you see the multifaceted challenges like having to deal with the Sports Ministry, your board members, officials, coaches and with the players.
Ones responsibility was to harmonise things as best you can with available resources so that any aspect does not suffer. We have tried to do our bit with concerned parties and its been rewarding and we’re quite happy that where we are today was not where we were when we came on board six years ago.
Last year was one of our most successful in the country for a long while. We had so many tournaments in the senior and junior levels.
Locally, we had former junior champion rising to the position of national number 1 player rising as high as 184 in the world just playing tournaments within Nigeria. The level of play among our players have grown and we have been able to train our officials to World Squash level 2 and some of our coaches too. Today we have ranking for Nigerian players.
How many Nigerians are listed in the World Squash ranking?
At the level, we have just about eight and none at the junior level. The reason we are not bothered with that at the moment is that for our players to be ranked they have to play in many tournaments in the international circuit. To enjoy that, you need to travel out and that comes at a cost which is not available to us for the children.
For now, we’re focusing on them on the home front. The senior players we can confirm are on the PSA ranking.
How are you managing the issue of age cheats?
We have been able to reduce that by at least by 90%. Any player that is playing on the Nigeria circuit is registered. Once the player registers, the age cannot change because it is part of the information process.
If for any reason there is a reason for correction, there has to be proof. What we do is that all the information provided are in our data base so that when a player enters for a tournament, we randomly ask what his or her age is and if we get something different from what is on our data base, the player would not be accredited. The player must justify the change or risk not playing in that tournament.
We have seen cases where a player tells you a different age different from what is on our data base and we just went online and found that the player lied.
While a player may be disqualified from the tournament, we also don’t want to discourage them, we give a warning to let them know that we have their records. You find out that the age cheat is either due to ignorance or it’s deliberately done by their coaches because the coaches want to win by all cost.
We also don’t blame the coaches because the states pressurize them whenever they go out for tournament to win or else, they won’t get sponsored next time. That forces them to do anything to return with medals. We want to change that narrative. We want a situation where the coaches are able to train the players over time so that there is a level of consistency.
The federation wants a situation where coaches don’t just seat and do nothing for over six months but wait for a few weeks to a tournament before working out with their players. There’s no way you want to coach a player for a week and then expect to win. And because of paucity of funds, these coaches go out of their way to impress their principals.
Have clubs been part of Squash development so far?
We owe a lot of the activities happening in squash today to clubs. Most of the tournaments we’re holding today are being championed by the clubs. Last year, the Old Trafford sponsored our Champions Challenge and here at the Teslim Balogun stadium we had Yellow Dot junior tournament planned. There have been so many tournaments.
When clubs like Ikoyi Club or Lagos Country Club hold tournaments, we ask them to add junior tournaments. Apapa Club sponsored a tournament two years ago. There are professional players attached to most of the clubs because that’s where there are facilities. Lots of clubs in Nigeria today are abandoned and risky to play on.
In Ibadan for instance, the Recreation Club is where we hold most tournaments. So we owe the clubs a lot.
What has happened to big international tournaments?
We can look at it from two angles. When I was Tournament Director in Lagos State, we were hosting $40,000 tournaments but how many Nigerian players get out of the qualification rounds, maybe one or two.
You find out that our players cannot compete or learn from players that are playing in the circuit and our players were not learning as we had wished. If I knew what I know now as President of the federation, I would not have encouraged such. That is not to say we won’t host such tournaments. We plan to hold a top class tournament but not in the range of that amount as we used to Lagos State.
We have realized that the bigger the tournament, the less likelihood for our players to benefit. That’s why we went down playing the closed circuit tournaments which allows more court time for our players and at the same time earning ranking points to improve their ranking in the international circuit.
The tournaments we’re talking about are international but professional players are discouraged because of the prize money. They take into consideration the cost of flight tickets as against getting 30 points but it turns out an advantage to our players here because they get to play more games and also earn money. The closed circuit tournaments of $1000 are cheaper and easier for stakeholders to sponsor.
Now, were moving to the $3,000 to $5,000 tournaments where we will have one or two professionals come to play but instead of knockouts, we will have round-robin so that rather than being knocked out in one game, our players get to play more games.
All those days we were running $40,000 tournaments, we were just enjoying ourselves because we were seeing good squash but we had no developmental value. Now as president, I see things from the developmental point of view.
Any there plans to have one or two players on the international circuit?
The strategy here for us is to get the players first to play in ranking tournaments which would give them opportunities to play in top flight events.
Grassroots programme?
We started our grassroots programmes about five years ago when we gave out kits –rackets, balls and goggles- to states of the federation. We called the state coaches to a training programme in Kwara and then in Abuja where we trained them and gave them a programme to follow. Facilities and kits are key to the development of the sport and we got sponsors to help out with equipment. We’re excited with the results that are coming in. We have a monitoring team that see to it that the coaches are doing what is expected of them.
What has happened to the British Open which was a major competition for Nigerian players?
I am hoping that we make a return to the British Open soon. What we have done in the last couple of years is to see how best we can get Nigeria back on the international scene like the World Team Championships in 2019 and we registered our presence. But we registered our presence and we also tried to go to Malaysia where visa issues against Israel caused a cancellation at the end of the day. This year hopefully, we look forward to getting our full compliment to New Zealand for the World Team Championship.