November

11/6: CRLS Squash attained school club status.

11/11: After much bureaucracy, we were able to secure court rentals from Harvard Murr Center!

11/22: We held 3 Squash Open Houses, and it became pretty clear that this sport sells itself! Once kids got on court they came back – participation grew from 18 kids at Open House #1, to 30 at #2, to 36 kids at #3. The courts were packed – the Harvard coaches were pretty impressed with our energy and enthusiasm!

December

24 students officially registered for our program – the absolute maximum we could take! Practices began at the Murr Center. Naji Khan and several assistants and parent volunteers all helped out to make sure students got started.

Players learned basic strokes and rules of the game. They started by playing games (to 11), and eventually matches (best of 5 games). They also learned how to referee and keep official scoresheets – extremely important as junior squash matches are all peer-reffed. This is one of the nicest parts of team and tournament play – after playing a match, the two competitors who just finished sit together to referee the next match on court – this forces competitors to acknowledge each other and to work together, helping to develop sportsmanship as well as friendships.

January

We started playing official “Challenge Matches” to establish our squash ladder. Lots of close matches and good competition among our beginners!

Team t-shirts arrived! A huge thank you to Lauren Holleran for taking care of all the logistics for getting these designed and ordered!!

1/18: We kicked off our season with our first match against Acton-Boxborough, out at SquashWest. We officially lost 3-4, but went 5-5 with the 10 players we brought! It was great to see our brand new players jumping into match play.

1/19: We bought a team of 8 players to the Boston Public Schools Tournament at SquashBusters’ Northeastern facility.  We played three teams, SquashBusters Boston, SquashBusters Lawrence, and Wellesley. A lot of excitement in our final match, we were tied 3-3 with Wellesley, with our #1 seed left to determine the outcome – quite a crowd gathered to watch as he battled back from down 0-2 games to win 3-2 and our team was able to claim victory, 4-3. In addition to getting some solid playing experience, our beginners got to watch some pretty high-level squash too. Tons of fun and great energy all around!

1/24: We hosted our first Home match against Brookline last Friday and it was a huge success! Brookline brought both their Varsity and JV teams, as well as some of their Girls’ team, and all of our players who felt ready to compete were able to get a match. Our team did a good job with reffing, acted as gracious hosts, and our t-shirts looked super sharp (thanks again to Lauren Holleran!). Tom Arria (CRLS’s athletic director) even stopped by to check us out! 

We continued to play challenge matches at our practices and several kids on our team now have squash ratings on Club Locker – an important milestone for any squash player! (To “get on the board” a player must win a match and lose a match against players who have ratings).

1/29: We hosted a competitive match against Wellesley. Though “officially” we lost 4-3 several of our beginners got to play and gained some great experience.

February

2/5: Traveled to Boston University to play Beaver Country Day School. A couple of our players played to five games, demonstrating excellent match-ups.

2/12: Hosted Concord-Carlisle at the Murr, a large team with many beginner players. All of our players who felt ready to compete were able to get a match!

2/14: For our grand Valentine’s Day finale, we split into two teams and played an “in-house” tournament. All players participated, and we included a few middle schoolers too. This was followed by a pizza/pickleball party and a truly memorable squash ball cake!