Women In Squash

I thought this week it would be prevalent to talk about more than 1 subject. The first item on the agenda which will provide the majority of today's discussion is the lack of women in squash. March 8th was international women's day and it got me thinking a lot about why more young girls and women don't play squash. When I was young I confess I wasn't sure why we would celebrate a day for women, but never for men. When I was a kid there weren't any noticeable differences to how girls were treated versus us boys. As I got older I began to understand that women weren't always treated equal. A lot has changed, but it's clear that there's still a long ways to go.

Let's steer this back specifically towards girls and women in squash. Since I was young there has always been a lack of girls playing squash. That being said my home club had a woman as a coach and she helped me a lot. As this time I would estimate about 80% of all tournament participants and club members were guys. Does squash simply cater more to the the male demographic? Are women uncomfortable playing squash in front of a mostly male environment? I imagine some do, so as a coach it's critical that we do our best to create a welcoming and safe atmosphere for everyone. When I was young there were a number of all male clubs in Toronto. I'm not sure how many still exist to this day, but I believe there is 1 or 2.

As a coach I've always ran a lot of events for women. In my first year coaching with the legendary Rob Brooks I learned a lot because he would annually host an all female tournament and a weekly women's drop in. The numbers weren't as large as the other events, but I could tell these were always very important to Rob and to the female members. After I graduated university and I got my first head coaching position I followed in Rob's footsteps and ran a ladies Christmas tournament and I also offered a weekly ladies only clinic. The numbers again weren't huge, but I felt it was important to offer events and clinics that women could feel comfortable and have fun in.

When I moved to western Canada and began coaching at St. Michaels there was I believe 2 girls on our team. Eventually we got to the point where we had as many as 6 or 7 girls traveling and competing in tournaments. This was a large number compared to other clubs, but considering we had over 30 kids on our team this was still a small ratio compared to the boys.

I saw the draws for the recently completed British Columbia Junior Provincials and there were only 33 girls in the event compared to 88 boys. There was no girls under 19 and only 3 played in the girls under 13 division. There are some amazingly strong girls in BC, but the numbers are as disappointing as ever and surely there is more we can do to improve this.

When International Women's Day happened on March 8th, I saw lots of squash players and organizations make posts to celebrate on social media. It got me thinking about why women's participation is still an issue. I realize some countries still don't have as many young girls competing in sport as they do boys. There is no professional NHL or MLB for women. PSA Squash is doing a great thing showcasing their women and offering equal prize money in many of their events. Still we don't see a lot of girls and women playing squash. Will that change over time as this equal prize money is still a moderately fresh concept? If the WNBA was on sport highlights and the players paid as much as the NBA stars would more young girls play basketball? It's tough to say how much this would change things, but I'm sure it would help a lot.

As someone who has coached a lot of young kids I can say that in general girls are more coachable, care more about the social aspect of sport, but boys are usually more competitive. Seeing that squash isn't normally a team sport perhaps that is why more young girls don't play?? I also believe part of it is because girls have to practice with some boys who they find immature and annoying! Whatever the case it would be great to see more girls get into our terrific sport and play competitively. I recall many times at my club back in Victoria we would never get women signing up for tournaments. 95% of them just didn't enjoy tournaments and only wanted to play their friends or take lessons.

Anyways, on to the next topic. I don't want to be jumping on the media crazed band wagon about the coronavirus, but seeing all of these daily emails I'm receiving and hearing about all of the sport cancellations it's hard not to mention it. Just yesterday US Squash announced that they are cancelling all of their remainder national squash championships for the season. As of now in Canada they have not taken such a drastic measure, but things could change.

On one hand it's hard to stop living your life because of this, but on another you understand that organizations are all about risk management and they don't want to get sued if a large breakout takes place at one of their events. When on court the sidewalls are generally covered in players dried up sweat so maybe changing your preserve routine is a good idea, but besides this I hope the events in Canada don't get cancelled.

In the NHL I hear the San Jose Sharks might be forced to play in an empty arena in their next home game on March 19th. This is something that could begin to flush through the league and extend to other sports. If the MLB has to play with nobody in the stadium that isn't going to be good for business and most noticeably the owners. Even if the coronavirus was more deadly and widely spread it's hard to imagine a large corporation being okay with taking on and accepting such financial pandemonium unless they were forced to.

This might not compare exactly, but I've traveled to areas in the world where some mosquitos have malaria. There is always some risk in life, even just in travelling to somewhere and I'm not one to hide for the fear of something going wrong. I think if people are sensible and stay home when they're sick and everyone else just washes their hands we can and should go on living life just the same. Maybe I'll delay my trip to China for a the time being, but other than that life goes on. Here in Turks and Caicos tourism is almost the entire economy and if people decide they don't want to travel anymore that's not going to be good for the country and could lead to a lot of other bigger problems.

I'm not a doctor and I don't have all of the facts, but I thought it was worth mentioning because it is all you see nowadays and it is starting to have a major impact on sport. Coronavirus has already impacted all of our lives and for some reason more than anything I can recall in my lifetime. It almost  feels like we're at the beginning of a zombie apocalypse. Let's hope the worst is behind us and we can get back to competing and cheering on at our favourite amateur and professional sporting events.

That's it for this week. If you haven't heard there is a new Serious Squash instructional film available in the shop for just $5. It's titled 'Advanced Back Corner Solo Drills.' It contains 4 episodes of Squash Shots, including an episode on my 10 favourite core exercises. It's available to stream at https://serioussquashshop.com/collections/coaching-videos/products/advanced-back-corner-solo-drills

If you like the film and you'd like to subscribe to Squash Shots you can do so for as little as $3/month. Next week is episode 44 which contains 2 of my new back corner advanced solo drills. Learn more at Patreon.com/SeriousSquash

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School Squash

As a Canadian squash coach and someone who has participated in the Canadian junior squash circuit many moons ago, I feel like I am in a good position to be able to discuss today's topic. I know I could easily be talking about the reffing controversy and the videos from Sobhy and Elshorbagy, but I don't have all of the details behind these stories and the facts I have gained are from a variety of people on social media who may or may not know what the backstories are.

Perhaps when the Windy City is done and the dust has settled I'll write up a post about it all. I am pretty excited for the finals tonight though. I feel like both finals should be great and I would not be surprised to see an upset from Coll over Farag. They are the 2 best movers in the game so it should be a great match. While on the women's side Raneem and Sherbini have the best racquet skill on tour.

Let's get on to today's topic; school squash and in particular in North America. When I was 1 young I played the U.S. Junior Open a few times and won it once and I think came 2nd another time. There were almost no strong American players back at this point in time. My how things have changed...

After my junior years Squash Ontario started up an annual summer tradition called Battle Of The Borders where the top junior players from Ontario would compete against the best American kids. That's right, a single province versus all of the U.S. In the early days Ontario was stronger, but now things are very different. Canada now sends their top players from the entire country and we almost always lose and it's not even close. The depth of talent in the U.S. now is so much greater than in Canada and I think it's pretty obvious why.

The U.S. has more courts, more coaches, more money and they really love and support their sports, but the main reason I believe that the U.S. has taken off in squash is because of their school squash programs. The College Squash Association (CSA) is basically the minor league system for the PSA World Tour now and the level of play is substantially higher than when I played (2005-2009).

Another school squash area is in the middle schools and high school levels. In the U.S. there are over 1,400 kids that participate in the High School Team Championships and I don't the exact numbers for the Middle School Team Championships, but there were 4 boys divisions of 16 teams and 3 girls divisions so the numbers was likely in the high hundreds.

As someone who has worked as a head coach for 8 years at a Canadian private school I'm well informed to discuss the Canadian school squash system. There are a few schools in Canada that have squash courts on campus. In British Columbia I believe there are 3. I has a full time squash coach the other 2 hire part time coaches. In Ontario I don't know the exact numbers, but there are a handful fo schools that have courts and none of which I'm aware of have a squash director or coach.

Over the years whenever I've looked at the current job openings on squash websites I most notably see U.S. schools looking to hire qualified coaches. Almost half of all of the jobs I see nowadays are for American schools. It's no wonder that the US has such a large crop of strong juniors and the numbers at their school team championships demonstrates the priority the country has placed on their squash programs. You really can't compare what the U.S. is doing to Canada or anywhere else for that matter.

Having courts, a program and a strong coaching staff at your school is an amazing resource I wish I had when I was a kid. Schools with programs are a terrific breeding grounds for growing our game and I wish more Canadian schools would step up to the plate and support their sporting programs and realize that investing in a squash program can benefit the school in numerous ways. It makes me wonder how the U.S. middle and high school system got to the level it's currently at...it must be the CSA.

Even at the university level Canada cannot compare to the states whatsoever. Western is the only school that competes in the CSA. I went to Western for this reason and when I was there I only played 1 home match in 4 years and we drove 2 minivans to each of our other matches. Normally I was one of the drives and we would drive for 6-12 hours and sometimes have a match that evening, sleep and then play 1 or 2 more before heading back. One weekend I remember driving to Cornell (6 hours), playing against Yale, driving to Toronto after the match to play 3 Ontario University Association (OUA) matches on the Saturday. I recall another time sleeping on the floor of a frat house at Cornell on the way to team finals because we were on a tight budget. Oh and did I mention that we didn't even have courts on campus and our coach was unpaid? I don't know how much things have changed at Western since I graduated, but that was what it was like just over a decade ago.

In the U.S. most of the school competing in the CSA have top notch facilities and world class coaches. They travel on team buses, have athletic trainers and even their equipment and uniforms are high end. Obviously most (if not all) of the U.S. schools have much larger endowment funds than Canadian schools, but I don't believe this is an excuse for having such a underwhelming school program here.

Do Canadian schools just need more money to have proper squash programs? If so is this something that Squash Canada or the provincial squash associations can assist with? Is it too late for Canada to learn from the U.S. system and try and mimic it on a smaller scale? As a coach, squash lover and someone who wants to see Canadian juniors flourish I sure hope we can figure this out.

I know a lot of squash clubs struggle to pay their bills. Squash courts take up a lot of space and the courts are generally only ever used at lunch and in the evenings. Schools however have the space, own their land and can make use of the courts all throughout the day. Let's hope in a decade from now we'll be able to look back and see more school squash programs not only in Canada, but all over the world.

It may sound like I was compiling today, but I really am thankful for all of the opportunities that Canada has presented to me. I'm just passionate about squash and I wish we as a country could do more to support the game at the junior and collegiate level and I believe the way forward is through school squash.

Did you know that Serious Squash has a new instructional film? It's a combination of 4 episodes of Squash Shots, 3 of which are on back corner solo drills and the final one is an episode of my 10 favourite core exercises. It's a 20 minute film that you can stream for just $5 at SeriousSquashShop.com

Enjoy the finals of the Windy City Open tonight! Who's your money on? I'll take Farag in 5 and Raneem in 4.