Eighteen players who took part in last weekend’s Irish Senior Nationals at Fitzwilliam will feature in the Irish Junior Nationals, which start in Cork on Friday.
Amongst the headline entries for the star-studded, three-day tournament hosted by Sunday’s Well and Highfield is Celtic’s Aaron Knox, the BU19 No.1 seed who won two Men’s A matches at the Senior Nationals.
He defeated Squash Ireland junior performance coach David Noone 3-2 and 2025 Irish Junior Nationals champion Danny Lynch 3-1 to win through to the quarter-finals against Irish No.1 Sam Buckley.
The ninth-seeded Knox lost 0-3 to eventual champion Buckley before going on to finish in seventh place overall.
He has now been drawn in box one for the BU19s, where he will face Fitzwilliam’s Frank O’Flynn and Sutton’s Advik Ajay, two players who also took part in the Irish Senior Nationals Men’s A.
BU19 box two at Sunday’s Well includes Christian Dromgoole, the No.2-seeded Sutton player who won the Men’s B title last Sunday at the Senior Nationals. The No.3 Tyler Dromgoole and the No.6 Nathan Hann also took part in last week’s seniors.
BU17 No.2 seed Danny Jones of Sutton, BU15 No.1 seed Michael Lai of Mount Pleasant and No.2 seed John Quigley of Sutton were the other three junior boys to play in the Seniors Men’s B.
Celtic duo Adam Power and Harry Knox are the respective BU17 and BU13 No.1 seeds in Cork, with Galway’s Conor Mullery the BU11 No.1.
All six players in the GU19 at Sunday’s Well – Sutton’s Zoe Yeomans, Rebecca Jackson, Isabel Fallon and Ella Walsh, Mount Pleasant’s Riley Slade and Belfast’s Shriya Drawid – all took part in the Women’s A Irish Senior Nationals.
Yeomans and Drawid both reached the Fitzwilliam quarter-finals, where they respectively came up against the title-winning Hannah Craig and finalist Breanne Flynn.
Yeomans is the No.1 seed in Cork and Drawid No.3, with Walsh listed at No.2.
The other three Irish Junior Nationals players who mixed it with the country’s best seniors last weekend are Sutton’s Zoë Sheridan, Mount Pleasant’s Zoë Nyhan and Limerick’s Ruby Carroll.
Sheridan is the GU17 No.2 seed behind Sutton’s Lucy Walsh, Nyhan is the GU15 No.1 seed and Carroll is the GU13 No.1.
A total of 107 players are registered for the 10-event Junior Nationals.
