Malinga raising the bar in world of squash

South Africa™s junior squash prodigy Awande Malinga keeps on taking the world of squash by storm as she has been recently crowned SA Nationals U19 Girls Champion, in Cape Town.

The 17 year-old Malinga displayed a dominant performance last week in the Growthpoint South Africa Junior Nationals Champion, where she won all her four games axing Rachel Shannon to claim her title.

Malinga says she went to the tournament hungry for the victory.

œWinning the SA U-19 Championship was very exciting. I was very happy with my performance especially after last year, losing in the finals and coming in the second place made me so hungry to come back this year and win the tournament, so I was very pleased with how I played.

œI really wanted to play well during that one week of squash in Cape Town because when I came from France from the World Junior Champs I learnt a lot and I got so much experience that I wanted to come back home and to actually implement that. So I think I really did well in that week, said Malinga.

The newly crowned SA Junior Champion has been on the national squash radar for some time- she and her team U-19 and U-16 Northern Gauteng, won gold this year at the SA Schools Squash Inter-provincial tournament, scooping 4x gold medals in a row.

Before the U-19 SA Nationals in Cape Town, Malinga was in France to represent South Africa in the Women World Junior Squash Individual Championships where she came out 55 out of 90. The Northerns player hopes to attract the eyes of the scouts and move to play abroad.

œI had so much experience in France-it taught me so much about how I can improve in my squash and implement everything that I learned there, here in South Africa.

œLater down the line I realised that academic is very important and I need to keep improving that because there are opportunities in terms of scout that are looking at athletes and I would love to go overseas, play squash professionally and get a scholarship to any of the universities there, so it was great going to France and seeing the atmosphere there in terms of Squash and how everythong roll overseas, Malinga added.