For more regular, bite-sized info follow us at https://www.twitter.com/BerkoSquashRbll - we tweet most days and our Friday 'Did You Know' series is rapidly becoming a social media sensation following last week’s post of coach Paul Carter in his shorter than short squash shorts when he won the British National Championships in 1988...

Annual Club Dinner Dance

To kick-off the Christmas Newsletter, a big thanks to Matt Markwort’s Social Committee, and to Graham and Claire Garlick in particular, for putting on a superb Club Dinner Dance on Saturday evening!  Their team did a brilliant job of preparing the clubhouse, serving excellent food, hosting an evening that was thoroughly enjoyed by all, and swiftly putting everything back to normal afterwards.  These things don’t go well without a lot of planning, organisation and hard work by those involved - great job!

Team results at the halfway stage

Most of our 5 teams have completed their matches for the 1st half of the season and will recommence warfare in January.

The 1st team have been superb, undefeated in 7 games so far in Herts Div 1.  Our Bucks League team are also table-topping their division, and the Vintage team are in 2nd place in their Middx O55 League.  Outstanding!

The next home match for our 1st team is Thursday 4th January, starting at 7.45pm against Nuffield St Albans.  Come on down and support the guys!

Don’t forget that you can now make a date for your diary of all the 1st team home fixture dates - see the display board positioned outside court 2.

Club kit

All teams are looking simply marvellous in their new shirts.  John now runs and hides every time someone mentions the word ’shirt’, but he will be ordering some matching warm-up tops in January for a few people who have requested those, and they’re a lot less stressful as no additional printing is required.  If anyone wants one, let him know (john.gs@btinternet.com).

It’s wonderful to see so many people wearing the kit and we hope everyone is happy with it.  At last year’s Tring Pro Open we noticed a number of players with ROA (a coaching academy in Warwick) branding on their shirts, and that planted the seed for doing something similar, but for all our members, not just the BEST Academy pro’s.  So it’s been great to make that happen.

BEST Academy

Speaking of the BEST Academy, for all of you who love watching squash on PSA SquashTV, the last big professional event of the year starts next Sunday and continues until Saturday 21st December.  The final is predicted to be between Egypt (1st seeds) and England (2nd seeds).  And playing number 1 for England will be Adrian Waller, coached by Adam’s BEST Academy!  Last week, 2 of the England team, Adrian and Daryl Selby, were at the club getting in some final training under the guidance of Adam and Paul.

Coach-led sessions for our members

Adam and his coaching team continue to do a great job with the coaching agenda for all of us.  The Juniors sessions will be expanding in the New Year with the reinstatement of Minis squash (4 to 8 year olds).  Mike Evans’ Skills & Drills on Thursday evenings is going great guns.  And, partly in response to our recent open question about what would help to encourage more women to play squash and/or squash57, Grace has switched the weekly Ladies coaching from Friday mornings to Saturday late afternoons from 4pm to 5pm, immediately following the Saturday afternoon Juniors coaching.

For more information about any of the coaching available at the club, whether it is coach-led group sessions or 121 individual coaching, do not hesitate to contact either Adam or Grace (adam@best-academy.co.uk and gracegearsquash@outlook.com).

Squash projects update

It’s been another busy year for continuously improving our facilities - and we’re not quite finished.

The new glassback walls to courts 5 and 6 have been well received, but the dark corridor carpet isn’t the best background when you are trying to focus on a small black ball moving rapidly into the deepest recesses of the court.  So we will shortly be replacing it with the same light oak vinyl flooring that we have behind courts 1 and 2 and throughout the rest of the clubhouse.  We will need to take courts 3-6 out of action for 24 hours while this is done.  We will try to schedule it for a non-busy moment, but please bear with us for the short time that it will take.

Then we are done for a bit!  Not that we won’t continue to keep our eyes open for small incremental things that will benefit us all - some sort of visual/audible scoring system for court 2 is on our minds, as is a facility for members to record games on their smartphones; and all suggestions are welcome.

Among our New Year’s resolutions are:

• the return of the Tring mega derby; 
• more ladies playing squash and squash57 (who knows, perhaps a ladies team in either the Herts or Bucks league in the 2020/21 season?); 
• more juniors playing squash at our club as their main club and progressing into our club boxes and making appearances for our teams; 
• further growth in our squash57 boxes;
• the re-emergence of a squash57 2nd team in the Summer 2020 leagues;
• and, of course, we will shortly be turning our minds to the 2020 club champs!

Merry Christmas and enjoy your squash and squash57 in 2020!

If you have anything in mind that you’d like to see from your squash and squash57 club in 2020, don’t hesitate to collar one of us.  Working together we will continue to aspire to make BLT&SRC the best squash/squash57 facility and community that it can be.

P.S.

Don’t forget the request for help in last month’s Newsletter.

Martin Fifield is helping to organise the British Heart Foundation’s biggest ever fundraising collection on Friday 7th February and Saturday 8th February 2020.  Locally it will be at Tesco’s in Jarman Park, and Martin would be really grateful to anyone who is prepared to give up a little bit of their time on one of those two days to help with the collection.

For further details, please speak to Martin at the club or contact him on either 07795 187349 or martinfifield@icloud.com

Another final P.S. 

From time to time the pro’s don’t quite tighten the bolts on the variable height tins (which we have on all courts) when they have finished their training, and it has been known for the red baton to occasionally slip away from its fixing.  If this ever happens when you are playing, we keep an Allan key stashed away on a piece of blu-tac on top of Adrian Waller’s display shirt next to the pool table.

That’s all for now.

Squash & Squash57 Committee
(John Shaw, Mark Shattock, Adam Fuller, Gill Trimmer, Rob Harbron)