Here’s this month’s Newsletter.  For more regular, bite-sized information, you can follow us on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/BerkoSquashRbll

For anyone who uses Twitter, do please follow us - since we went live on 1st September, we post a tweet most days and we’re striving to make them all relevant and interesting!

Glassback conversions and the balcony modernisation are complete

We hope everyone is pleased with the outcome, keeping our club facilities up to date and in an excellent condition that we can all enjoy and be proud of.

It was great to be able to play the Graded Round Robin event on all 6 courts last Friday.  It was very well attended - thank you to everybody who played and to Richard Carr and Gill Trimmer for organising.

A new date for your diaries

Next week is the first home match of the new season for our 1st team:  Thursday 17th October, starting at 7.45pm against Broxbourne.  Included in our team are likely to be former world number 105 Joe Green, current world number 93 and assistant club coach Grace Gear, Czech number 2 Ondrej Uherka, and England over-35 player Ali Coker.

Why not book a game yourself, then have a drink and watch some of the best squash that can be seen outside the professional circuit - happening at our club, free of charge.  Those doing the Skills & Drills session next week, stay on afterwards and watch for the shots that you’ve just been practicing with Mike.

Look out for all 1st team fixture dates on the new display board positioned outside court 2.  The following home match is on 14th November.

The team will soon be modelling the new club shirts.  You won’t miss them, they’re the Yellow ones!  

Update on club shirt orders

The order has been submitted to Dunlop (200 items ordered!).  We had to make a few adjustments where their stock was low in some colours/sizes, but we’re now hoping for a quick turnaround.  Then we’ll be taking them to the printers for the addition of things such as the club logo, club name and player names.

The cost of each shirt will be £25 (40% reduction to RRP), warm-up jackets £30 (50% off) and shorts £17.50 (50% off).  We’d hoped to get the shirts down to £20 but, notwithstanding negotiations with the printer, and some leverage from their main client who is also one of the sponsors to Adam’s pro squad academy, we need to charge a bit more than that in order to break even.

John will give his bank details to everyone who has placed an order, once we get closer to a known delivery date.

Dunlop have offered to link up with Berkhamsted Sports for a promotional evening at the club, with their latest range of rackets, bags, balls, etc.  We may try and combine this with the distribution of shirts.

Tring mega derby

Talking of evenings at the club, we think it’s about time we brought back the social fixture against our friends down the road.  Let’s make it squash and racketball, men and women, juniors and adults.  It used to be a great event but it has gone by the wayside in recent years.  A few of us are at Tring next week for their annual PSA (Professional Squash Association) event, and we’ll be discussing it then.  More news on this soon.

By the way, Tring still have a few tickets available for next week, but they are going quickly.  It is an excellent draw, headed by Daryl Selby, England number 1 and world number 17.  Details are on our club noticeboard, or can be found on the Tring club website.  Tickets vary from £10 to £15, depending on which evening you attend and, for that, you get about 4 hours of top level squash.  But don’t go on Thursday.  On Thursday, you need to be at our club watching our 1st team.

Herts County Champs

Indeed, by next week, our 1st team captain, Ali Coker, is likely to be the Herts over-35 champion.  No pressure, Ali.

This weekend is the annual Herts County Champs.  Two of Adam’s pro squad academy players, Adrian Waller (world number 24, and fresh back from America after reaching the last 16 at this week’s US Open) and Rui Soares, Portugal number 1, are likely to be contesting the men’s final.  Ali has entered the O35s, Brendan Murphy the 045s and John Shaw the O55s.  John is unlikely to be contesting anything other than the 1st round.  Good luck to them all!

Sky Sports is here

If all the above is too much excitement for you, why don’t you sit down and take the weight of your legs for a while.  But do it in our club bar.  Watching Sky Sports.  Fabulous news that we’ve brought it back after much feedback from members.  Well done to Matt Markwort and his social committee.  Imagine, on a Thursday evening, you’ll be able to watch top football on Sky or, if Spurs are playing, watch top squash featuring our 1st team on courts 1 and 2, while wearing your new club shirt.  Happy days.

Racketball/Squash57

A special shout-out this month to Mark Tanzer, who is doing brilliant work in revitalising the Squash57 boxes.  In particular, it is lovely to see a number of our women members joining the racketball boxes.  Racketball presents a tremendous opportunity for beginners of all ages and ability to find out how much fun it is to charge around a squash court for 45 minutes.  Keep it going Matt, and let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

Building on Women’s Squash Week

Which brings us to our final point.  We recently held a couple of sessions as part of the nationwide Women’s Squash Week.  We would like to build on these.  Ladies, what would you like from your squash and squash57 club?  How can we help you?  What would encourage and help (a) more of you (b) to start playing (c) to play more often?

That question is open to all our lady members and all wives and girlfriends of our bloke members.  Please let us know what you think.  Speak to, or email, either Adam, Grace or John:

adam@best-academy.co.uk

gracegearsquash@outlook.com

john.gs@btinternet.com

That’s all for now.

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