Pride

No. not gay pride. squash pride.


Or both if you like-------->



I was asked to describe squash in one word. I needed to think a long time on it. I can use half a day to talk about why squash is the greatest sport in the world, and why the people I meet in my path are the greatest people... but to put it all in one word. Thats difficult.

But it occured to me. Pride

I am proud of the sport. It especially hit me when thinking of how an entire sports community can come together as one, like during "BacktheBid2020" to get squash into the 2020 Olympics. I normally regard myself as a reflected person who would say "well the other sports worked hard too", or "we dont really know how much work they put into it"
But really, no other sport has stood together as one, worked and cared so much as a synchronized entity as the squash community did in the period leading up to the biased, predetermined IOC meeting in Buenos Aires. Win or lose, our boys put up a hell of a fight.

In the British junior open this year, which is the unofficial World Championships for juniors, we saw a kid from Peru playing a kid from Jordan in the final in the most prestigious U19 class. In what other sports do you see Peru and Jordan compete on the highest level in any sport? It is so great to see the sport grow in the countries where you would normally not expect it. Jordan has several premium players, Israel needs to be mentioned, Diego from Peru is a rear case, more eastern european countries are putting together more tournaments and junior programmes, in the world championships we saw a flag from Zimbabwe, Argentinians, caribbeans.... the list goes on.

There are those people around that gives it their all for squash. Former players, professionals, coaches or those who just love the sport. I call them the firesouls. Their soul burns (not like in hell..no.. It means like.. dedicated. get it?) for the sport and they do everything in their power to raise the sport to a new level. The difference between a firesoul and a general manager of a gym is that the manager will tear the squash courts down to make more money out of a gym facility. The firesoul works his butt off to arrange lessons for school classes in the day, social evenings, ladders, tournaments and league. Maybe there is less dollars, but they are not in this for the dollar.

In the USA they have squash training for kids to get them off the streets.

The Egyptians have all had a bloody tough time over the last years with the political situation, but the quality of squash remains. The players are heroes in their own country and shine a light of positivity into an unfortunate, and hopefully temporary situation.

In Pakistan, a country with long squash traditions (for men) a brave soul Maria Toorpakay, trained and competed as a boy in an area controlled by taliban. A female in such a sport was looked upon as "un-islamic" and when her gender became common knowledge, she was harassed and bullied. Did she lay down and cry? She pursuied her dream, moved to Canada and is now top 50 in the world.




Our world champions are graceful in victory as they are in defeat. They are approachable and totally free of any cocky behaviour.

You have to be bloody tough to be a squash player, you have to be driven to be a squash coach, you have to be motivated to run a squash club, you have to be plain stupid not to vote squash into the Olympics and you have to be crazy not to be able to enjoy a good squash match.







(Note to Thomas and Cigany: I write freely from the top of my head with no reviewing, so excuse my french but this is an attempt of english. TypeOs and bad structured sentences are the privelige of blogging and how I enjoy writing. As long as my message comes across.)

I know I know: BadLY structured sentences, bessevissers