Te Awamutu Squash Club's Connor Hill in action for the New Zealand Junior Boy's Worlds team in St Kilda, Melbourne.
Te Awamutu Squash Club's Connor Hill in action for the New Zealand Junior Boy's Worlds team in St Kilda, Melbourne.
Te Awamutu Squash Club’s Hill brothers Connor, 18, and Fergus, 14, will travel to Niagara, Canada for the Canadian Junior Open and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the United States Junior Open in December.
Both players have had many tournaments and opportunities leading up to this pinnacle event.
The Te Awamutu SquashClub juniors programme is one of the strongest in the Waikato and is doing very well in pushing through juniors to a high level.
Connor Hill
Hamilton Boys’ High School alumnus Connor became the first Te Awamutu Squash Club member in recent history to compete for the New Zealand Junior Boy’s Worlds team in St Kilda, Melbourne and to play at that level for New Zealand.
The five-day World Junior Championships in July saw junior players from all around the world converge to vie for the top junior in the world (boys and girls).
Coached by Paul Hornsby and managed by Rachel McLeod, the other members of the New Zealand squad were Apa Fatialofa (Auckland), Oli Dunbar (Wellington), Chris Hebberd (Marlborough), Shane Buckle (Auckland) and Freddie Jameson (Northland).
The level of squash was incredible as was the pressure on some of these kids.
Connor’s six matches were against representatives from France, Switzerland, Macau, Kuwait, Chinese Taipei and New Zealand. He lost his first two, won the following three, and lost his final match against teammate Hebberd - a 3-3 record.
The journey for Connor to attend Worlds wasn’t an easy one. He had to work hard to prove his worth.
A member of Te Awamutu Squash Club since the age of 8, Connor progressed through the grades, while also playing other sports such as cricket and rugby.
At age 12, he made squash his primary sport and quickly moved up from there, reaching A2 grade in April this year - his last season as a junior.
The Hill family have been part of the Te Awamutu Squash club for many years. His great-grandfather Raymond Bowers, was an original member of the club, and his grandparents and now his parents and brother Fergus are all members.
Te Awamutu Squash Club's Connor Hill in action for the New Zealand Junior Boy's Worlds team in St Kilda, Melbourne.
Connor made the New Zealand Secondary Schools senior boys team to travel to Brisbane for the Trans-Tasman Challenge last year as well as the New Zealand Development squad.
The development squad season went on into 2023, entailing camps with the New Zealand coaching team.
In January, the squad members were to indicate if they wanted to be up for selection for the New Zealand Junior Boy’s team to travel to the Worlds.
Connor put his hand up and then set about training hard to meet all the required milestones.
He engaged a new coach, Phil Buscke-Somervell, and travelled to Thames every week to train.
This was the boost he needed to move to the next level, and to move up to A2 grade.
There were six New Zealand positions up for grabs, with the top four being fairly certain picks.
The final two spots came down to who worked the hardest and put the effort in to get the results.
Connor had a number of great wins in the first half of the year against other players vying for these spots.
In May, he got the phone call from the Squash NZ high performance manager Shelley Kitchen saying he had been selected for the team.
Once selected, the nine weeks pre-Worlds were busy.
As well as working fulltime in his parents’ business, Connor had several tournaments to play, team camps to attend and weekly strength and conditioning sessions with his local Crossfit coach on top of sessions with his coach.
Connor, his family and the Te Awamutu Squash Club fundraised for the trip while local Cornerstone Trust contributed funds towards the cost too.
Next for Connor is the Te Awamutu Open over September 15 and 16.
Several members from the New Zealand team and A1 players from around the country will travel to play in this.
Following on from this, the Junior Nationals Individuals and Teams Event will take place in Lower Hutt during the September school holidays. Connor is the number one seed for the Waikato Junior Boy’s team.
Te Awamutu Squash Club's Fergus Hill after the Trans Tasman Secondary Schools Squash Series.
Fergus Hill
Like his brother, Year 10 student Fergus has been playing squash since year 7, after having played rugby and cricket, made squash his primary sport.
He also moved through the grades quickly and recently moved to B2 grade.
Fergus trains twice a week before school with Dave Werder and Angus McDonald in Hamilton and also does strength and conditioning sessions at the local Crossfit gym.
He recently played as number two seed in the Hamilton Boys’ High School squash team at the NZ Secondary Schools Squash event in Auckland.
The team was seeded fifth going into the start of the tournament, and as they progressed with a number of great wins and tight matches, ended up fifth overall.
From this tournament, the organisers selected a team of 20 secondary school kids to form the NZ Secondary Schools Squash team – five boys and five girls from Years 9-10, and five boys and five girls from Years 11-13.
Fergus was shortlisted for the team a month beforehand so he knew he was in contention, and as the turnaround time after being named to travelling for the tournament with Australia is short – two weeks.
Leading up to the NZSS tournament, Fergus had some very good wins against higher-graded players at the North Island Age Groups in Whanganui, making the final for the Under-15 boys team having been 6th seed (taking out the 2nd and 3rd seed in the quarters and semi finals).
He then had great wins and an overall great tournament at the NZ Secondary Schools which culminated at the prizegiving with Fergus was named as the fifth seed in the junior boys team.
Two weeks later, Fergus and the team were on a plane to Sydney to play in the Trans-Tasman Test.
The team played at Thornleigh Squash Club in West Sydney over five days (August 21-25).
The first three days they played twice a day against a team from Queensland and a team from New South Wales – switching seedings around over the three days.
New Zealand Secondary Schools Squash team - Te Awamutu's Fergus Hill is on the right.
This was for the first trophy, which New Zealand convincingly won. Fergus played six games, winning three and losing three.
On the Thursday they played doubles, with Fergus playing with the number one-seeded girl from the junior girls team.
They played Queensland and NSW and Fergus and his partner had a win and a loss. Overall the New Zealand Team won this challenge too.
The final challenge was on Friday, which was for the big trophy – playing a combined Queensland/New South Wales team as an Australia team to take on the Trans Tasman Trophy.
First round was doubles and then singles – with a total of 30 games played.
New Zealand needed 16 wins overall to take back the trophy and managed to just sneak in with a 17-13 win.
Fergus’ doubles proved to be quite challenging with a loss, and his singles game was by far his best performance of the week playing Joel Raj, who was the Queensland number two boy (Australia number five). Fergus pushed himself and managed to get a set off Joel; however, Joel secured the win in four sets.
Making this team was an exceptional achievement for Fergus at a young age – and he is continuing to work hard to progress through the grades to attempt to be in contention for the senior boys team for the same tournament next year.
Next for Fergus is the Te Awamutu Open and then Junior Nationals Individuals in Lower Hutt.
He is the non-travelling reserve for the Waikato Junior Boys team.
Cornerstone Trust was able to provide assistance to Fergus towards his costs of travelling.
Other than his brother, there has been no one else selected for this team from Te Awamutu in recent history.
The Waikato Junior Boys and Girls team has three other Te Awamutu Juniors, Austin Furniss, Charlee Neilson and Shannon Nightingale, as well as Dayna Burr as non-travelling reserve for the junior girls team.
