The Borders Squash Championship 2026 was contested at Galashiels Squash Club last week; this is a Team tournament where that pits the best squash players for macreoss the region against each other. This year see n6 teams enter, Reigning Champions Hawick, Kelso, Selkirk, Peebles, Lauder (making their debut) and a Rest of Borders Team.
In Group 1 favourites Hawick opened the evening against Selkirk, and Hawick won a tetchy opener 2-1 (Tony Elliot 15-7 Iain Laing, Dan Boshoff 15-7 Scott Hall, Del Sharratt 10-15 Scott Hall). Selkirk the nwent down by same score to Rest of Borders (Iain Laing 16-14 Richard Taylor, Scott Hall 16-18 Alex Johnson, Darren Quinn 12-15 Derek Noffke). This set up an interesting decider between Hawick and Rest of Borders for a place in the final.
This match seen Hawick much more relaxed and composed than the opening game and Hawick took this 3-0 (Tony Elliot 15-10 Richard Taylor, Dan Boshoff 15-10 Alex Johnson, Del Sharratt 15-10 Derek Noffke.
Group 2 kicked off with former Champions Peebles taking a rather straight forward victory over Lauder (Sam Collin 15-4 Jerry Cooke, Richard Hebb 15-6 Stevie Aitchison, Pat Spence 15-10 Craig scott). Lauder were then straight onto the match against a Strong Kelso side – but this also ended in a 3-0 victory again st Lauder (Colin Woodward 15-3 Jerry Cooke, Alan Jobes 15-8 Stevie Aitchison, Nick Jubb 15-12 Craig Scott). Similar to group 1 this meant the Kelso v Peebles match was huge, as the winner would face Hawick in the Final.
This was a CLOSE match in All the games. Peebles took the scalp of Kelso 2-1 (Sam Collin 15-12 Colin Woodward, Richard Hebb 12-15 Alan Jobes, Pat Spence 15-12 Nick Jupp).
THE FINAL:
HAWICK v PEEBLES
The first rubber was Del Sharratt v Pat Spence. Spence took the initiative in this and used deception to race off to a 7-1 lead; Sharratt got the hand back and although Sharratt started dominating the rallies and fought back to a two point deficit at 11-13, Spence used his Guile to send Sharratt the wrong way and got the last two poins for a 15-11 to take the first for Peebles.
Next up was Border Reivers regulars Dan Boshoff v Richard Hebb. Although both players were fairly evenly matched, Hebb frequently played overhead smashes into the time and gave away too many points, Boshoff took it 15-7 to make it 1-1 and therefore left Hawick’s Tony Elliot and Sam Collin of Peebles to battle it out for the title.
Elliot started as favourite, Elliot has 9 individual Club Titles to his name and is seldom beaten in the Borders; Collin was desperate to take the title back to Peebles for a 2nd time.
Elliot did not get this his own way and couldn’t stamp his authority on the match as Collin was equal to everything Elliot threw at him; as the game went to 8-8, then 11-11 and the spectators knew this was going to the wire. Collin was serving at 14-13 for the match but a Deft drop shot by Elliot kept him in the game. Indeed there were another 4 match points before Collin dug deep and managed to get over the line for 19-17 to take the title to Peebles.
Organiser and Match Secretary Del Sharratt said “the evening was as expected – lots of top drawer squash on display and Sam Collin was the stand out player taking the scalp of tow higher seeded players in Colin Woodward and Tony Elliot. It was great to see Lauder raise a team for the first time and hopefully more towns can get involved next year. This tournament is a great way to dust off the cobwebs from the summer and prepare for the upcoming East of Scotland League Season.”
The Winning Peebles Team L-R:
Pat Spence, Sam Collin, Richard Hebb