As the days grow shorter and fall is upon us, it’s our pleasure to welcome you to the 2023-2024 squash season. Whether you’re a player, parent, donor, member or volunteer, thank you for your support and involvement in squash–we can’t wait for you to be a part of the exciting plans we have in store.
What have we been up to?
Women’s Squash Week just wrapped up with more than 50 events hosted across the country, bringing thousands of women back to the courts. Here is one example of what this looks like.
Of course, launching the season including programs, events and fielding our National Teams takes planning.
This weekend the U.S. Open Squash Championships presented by Truist kicks off a packed tournament and event schedule at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center, including celebrating CSA@100, one hundred years of college squash and a look-ahead to its next century.
Team USA will travel to Santiago, Chile later in October to compete in the quadrennial Pan American Games to try to equal or exceed their remarkable medal haul four years ago. District, collegiate and scholastic squash leagues take flight in November, while the junior tournament scene is already in full swing.
Throughout all of this, whether it’s tournament play, team activities, or simply cheering on a friend or child of yours, we are increasingly focused on promoting the qualities of good sportsmanship, including fairness, courtesy and respect. Expectations have been set, and the standards are in place to promote fair play and create an enjoyable, healthy and safe environment at all levels of competition. You can read more on this on a new section of our website called Sportsmanship & Character.
Why is this so important?
I was recently reminded of the saying “it’s never wrong to do the right thing” while watching an episode of Ted Lasso, season 2 (yes, I’m a little behind on my TV binging). Playing squash provides us opportunities on nearly every point in one way or another to live, practice and embrace this. Whether it’s knowing that you made every effort to clear, or that you should be offering a stroke to your opponent without them asking, or calling balls down on yourself when you have any doubt about whether you got the ball before the second bounce. Put another way… in life, people don’t remember the score, they remember how you made them feel and the quality of your character. So when we play squash as it’s meant to be played, we are reinforcing for ourselves the values of good character.
Each new season gives us the opportunity to become better players, coaches, parents and patrons, and better versions of ourselves. We’re fortunate to have squash to bring us together and we look forward to a fun and fulfilling season.
See you at the courts,
Kevin Klipstein
President & CEO, US Squash
