Kunle Adewale

After seven days of thrilling and entreating squash action, the Prime Atlantic Squash Tournament would today come to a close at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

The tournament, which is in its fourth edition, kicked off on June 9, has witnessed a lot thrilling games and shocking results.

In a chat with THISDAY, the Chairman of the Lagos State Squash Association, Tomi Falase, hailed the 2025 Prime Atlantic Squash Championship for serving as a conveyor belt in the production and nurturing of young talent for Nigeria’s squash.

“We’ve been running this consecutively for years now, it is part of our grassroots development programe and we use that has an opportunity to also develop players and discover talents,” Falase said.

The tournament, according to him, is offering youth players a stage to demonstrate their potential and gain visibility with national and state-level coaches.

“This competition has grown into a key driver of youth development in squash. Our goal is to keep these players active, disciplined, and constantly improving through regular tournaments and training,” Falase opined.

The LSSA boss is indeed calling for greater corporate involvement to expand the tournament’s offerings and bolster Nigeria’s global competitiveness in squash.

“With sustained sponsorship, we can develop athletes who are capable of competing on the world stage,” he expressed.

On what makes this year’s edition different from the previous ones, he said, “in the previous editions we were running U16 but in this year’s edition we ran U19. We realised that our U16s have now developed, so we decided to move them to the senior level.”

After four years of Prime Atlantic squash tournament, Falase said the biggest gain of the competition is in talent discovery.

“Talent discovery is no doubt the competition’s biggest gain. We’ve discovered a good number of young boys and girls that are really living up to expectation. Day in, day out, you see them coming to the stadium to play. The tournament in itself has helped, and because they know it’s a yearly event, so they tell their friends. Some of them start playing squash because they want to be part of Prime Atlantic competition,” Falase concluded.