My Experience With Squash and the Life Lessons It Taught Me
Those who are close to me and those who have followed any of my social media or writing are likely well aware of my passion for sports. I grew up playing baseball, hockey, and a little bit of tennis throughout my childhood, as well as having gained strong interests in basketball and football (both American and European) in high school. One aspect of my sporting life that even those closest to me know little-to-nothing about is my involvement in squash. I didn’t take up squash until my second year at university, at which point only people within my household and a few of my friends knew that I was even playing the sport. Despite my reluctance in making this hobby known to my peers, this sport has meant a lot to me over the past few years. This article outlines why I gained interest in the sport, my involvement on the Brock University Men’s Squash Team, what squash has done for me, and why I would encourage others to take up squash.
Why did I even start playing squash?
This is a question that I imagine many people have for those who play squash. It’s a sport that is not broadcasted on mainstream television (at least in North America), receives no news coverage from mainstream media, and is not highly regarded as a popular high school or collegiate sport. So where does the appeal come from?
Personally, the appeal for me came from filling a hole in my life. At the end of the summer after my first year of university, I had suffered an injury playing baseball that ended up being a pretty big blow to the way I live my life and doing the things I enjoy most. The ball jammed my right middle finger as I was trapping the ball into my glove while fielding a groundball. When I came up to throw the ball, the ball essentially went nowhere as I was unable to grip it. When I looked down, my middle finger was completely stiff; I was unable to move it at all. When I went to see the doctor, I was told that the finger was dislocated and that the joint of the finger was completely shattered. I ended up in a cast for six months, during which time the doctors would gradually try to move my finger each time I saw them in an attempt to try to get it back to its original position. In terms of how this affected my living, up to that point my post-high school exercise almost exclusively came from sports. I would play baseball during the summer, hockey during the fall and winter, and basketball throughout the calendar year. As a result, this took a pretty big toll on my health. Furthermore, I was in the process of switching programs at university and spent most of my first year in my new program typing notes and papers with one hand. At one point, I even had to approach a professor after being baffled about how I got 10% on a midterm. After reviewing my midterm, the professor found that the scantron was unable to register most of my answers because I filled in the bubbles too lightly. I didn’t tell him, but they were filled in so lightly because I took the midterm by writing with my offhand.
After the six months of rehabilitation finger exercises (yes, finger exercises are a thing that exists) and gradually moving my finger back into place, it had gotten back to a point where I could leave my cast off, although my finger was not strong enough to close a full fist. I was excited about being able to play sports again until my doctor told me that I shouldn’t play a sport like basketball where I need to catch or handle a ball with my hand for another six months, as if I so much as jammed it in the state it was already in it could lead to permanent injury. With that in mind, I needed to find a new sport to stay active where I could play and not worry too much about the risk of further damaging my finger. It just so happened that my parents knew the doctor working on my finger through the White Oaks gym in St. Catharines, where all three of them play squash. My parents have been playing squash for ~40 years, but at that point in time, I had never even stepped onto a squash court. I decided that squash could be a sport I could play with my injury, as I could tape my finger, grip the racquet, and just forget about my finger until after playing. My father took me out to White Oaks a few times to try it, and I was instantly hooked by the need for a combination of speed, stamina, hand-eye coordination, and strategy.
What squash has meant to me
The benefits from picking up squash for me were almost immediate and benefitted me both mentally and physically. It helped regain the strength in my grip that I lost from my injury, it gave me an outlet where I could just play for hours and forget about any outside issues, and it gave me something to focus on besides school.
The mental aspect was especially important for me. At the time that I picked up squash, I was just entering my second year at university. In my first year, my grades weren’t very good and continued to get worse as the year went on, leading me to lose motivation to continue in my program. In truth, I felt totally lost. I was only working full-time hours during the summer, so my entire school term was meant to be left to focus on school. Once I started struggling in school, I also struggled to find an identity. My mindset was that “if all I’m focusing on right now is school and I’m no good at that, then what else can I do?” If you put the pieces together, you will realize the answer to this question was stated earlier in that I switched programs to try to find something I was good at and fit into. After my first year in my new program, my grades were up and I was well into squash. In years since then, playing squash consistently allowed me to change my mindset regarding the burden that school put on me. I decided that I would place equal importance on health and school, as I found it both mentally and physically unhealthy to focus all of my energy on school.
This change in mentality led to the physical aspect of how squash changed my life. After my first year in my new program, when I decided that I would place equal importance on health and school, I found myself at White Oaks either playing squash or working out 5–6 days a week. Growing up, I played enough sports that I didn’t need to worry too much about weight, physical health, or weight training. However, as many people do, I gained quite a bit of weight in my first couple of years after graduating high school. However, with squash becoming such a physical factor in my life and motivating me to exercise almost every day, I did a complete 180 on my physical health trend, losing 50 pounds in my second year in my new program.
During the year that I lost all of this weight from squash, the sport taught me lessons on resiliency, competitiveness, and taught me more about myself than I already knew. I learned from playing squash that I love running. I would often run before my matches to warm up, and in cases where I lost my matches, I would at times do treadmill sprints until I couldn’t run anymore to unleash any frustration. Before I started playing squash, I could barely run for five minutes without needing to stop. Now, I regularly do 10 km or longer runs with relative comfort. I also learned how competitive I was, as essentially being locked in a box playing somebody one-on-one can really put someone’s competitive spirit (or lack thereof for some) on display.
After playing for a couple of years, drastically improving my physical conditioning, and completely putting my injury behind me, I decided that I would try out for the Brock Squash Team. I decided that if I made it, it would be a reward for all the hard work I had put in over the past couple of years, and if I didn’t, I would at least know just how far along I have actually come regarding squash. Upon arriving at tryouts, I learned that everyone that tries out makes the team (which was honestly a bit of a buzzkill), but only certain players actually play. For those unaware of how squash teams work, the team ranks its players to see who plays, and specifically, who plays the other teams’ best players. Team matches are a best out of seven series where the seventh-ranked player on one team plays the seventh-ranked player on the other, the sixth-ranked plays the other sixth-ranked, and so on. As a result, each team’s top-seven players play and each team typically brings the eight-ranked player in case of injury. The only way for players to improve their rank is to challenge the player on their team one rank above them, where the winner of the challenge match takes the highest rank in question. When I started with the Brock team, I was given the ninth rank and won my first challenge match to get the eighth rank. The players and coaches on the team were all very friendly, and like myself, were most interested in improving themselves and their teammates. As a result, I found myself playing squash for multiple hours almost every day, improving drastically in the process. By the time the first Ontario University Athletics tournament came around, I had found myself as the team’s seventh-ranked player, meaning that I would play in the first tournament.
As the year went on, the lessons I learned about resiliency proved crucial. I was able to maintain my ranking all season long, and with my mental and physical health continuing to improve, I found my grades also consistently climbing despite all the time that I was putting into squash. My record for the team wasn’t great, but unlike when I lost in a White Oaks league match, I was never too frustrated when I lost for Brock. I would be frustrated if I lost to an opponent that I knew I could beat, but for the most part, I was playing people that had played squash for their whole lives, while I had only played squash for a couple of years. By the end of the season, if I remember correctly, I had won only three matches and lost 12. During the playoffs, I found myself playing as the team’s fifth-ranked player as a result of other players having injuries or having other athletic and/or scholarly commitments, and ended up facing people whose skills were at a level that I will likely never reach. Nonetheless, I am very grateful for my experience with the team, my teammates, and my coaches, as my time with the team is likely done thanks to COVID-19.
Why should you pick up squash?
Because it’s fun.
But seriously, there are lots of reasons to play squash. I’m not by any stretch of the imagination saying that you will have the same experience as me, but I will say that the sport can serve a number of purposes. For those looking for a competitive outlet: what’s more competitive than being locked in a cage for a one-on-one competition? For those looking for a social outlet: what’s more social than being locked one-on-one in a cage with someone else for a set amount of time? Well, I could think of a couple of other answers to that question, but I have met many people through squash whose favourite part of the sport was just being able to meet and get to know new people through sport. While I’m not the most social person in the world, I have really missed meeting new players and new people to compete with over squash since the pandemic has started.
For those looking for physical benefits, it helped me greatly with conditioning, speed, and footwork. For those looking to improve any of the following, I would imagine that it could greatly help improve some with hand-eye coordination and strength (both upper and lower-body).
In any case, I dedicate much of the mental space and physical condition that I am in right now to squash. before I started playing squash, I found that I was unsure of my identity, my mental condition was questionable at best, and my physical condition was even worse. Picking up the sport showed me that I had more to consider in life than just academics, and helped me realize the importance of balancing mental and physical health with other responsibilities. It has helped the past few years move by so quickly for me that I can hardly believe I am only a few months away from getting an honours degree in university.
I understand that some activities aren’t for everybody. If squash doesn’t seem like your cup of tea, try something else! I encourage everyone to find something that can do for them what squash did for me. If you have any questions about squash or want to reach out to me for any reason, my Twitter handle is @chrisandosports.
