Dear Squash and Squash57 members - here’s what you’ve all been waiting for:  it’s your monthly Newsletter for February!

Don’t forget, if you’re on Twitter give us a follow:  https:/www.twitter.com/BerkoSquashRbll - we post a tweet most days and we try to make them informative, relevant and fun.  We’ve got 74 followers, so we’ve not exactly gone viral, but we’re gradually infecting the squash/squash57 community.

Last Month’s Harry Faulkner Memorial Match

Thank you for a great turnout for the annual Harry match against St Albans.  There was some brilliant squash, with Berkhamsted winning 5-0 after amazing comebacks from Adam, Dan and Julian, all of whom lost their first 2 games before turning things around to win in 5.

It was lovely to see so many people watching and enjoying the squash and making it a great atmosphere on this important memorial date in the club’s calendar.

We’ll do our best to organise similar things which bring together more people, more often.

Future Dates For Your Diary

The win against St Albans continued the 1st team’s push to be the Herts League 2019/2020 champions.  They are currently joint top with 2 matches remaining, both of which are at home:

Thursday 27th February 7:45pm vs Radlett
Thursday 5th March 7:45pm vs Tring

Last match of the season, the local derby against Tring at home to win the league!  What an evening that could be - put it in your diary now and get yourself down to the club on 5th March!

Also, we’d like to give you early notice to put your name forward to play in a club friendly away against Hazelwood in Winchmore Hill on the evening of Saturday 16th May.

We’d love to get some of our 1st team players involved, to go up against the Waller brothers (it’s ok, they’re not a North London crime syndicate), but we’d equally like people who have never played team squash/squash57 to join in.  It will be a fun, social event, with food provided and, potentially, a coach/mini bus for transport.

If we can get a good take-up, we’ll run a similar fixture at home against Tring.  Some of our old timers recall that there was a piece of silverware called the Grand Union Cup that went to the winners of the Berko/Tring mega derby.  If anyone happens to know the current whereabouts of said cup, please let us know!

Coming later in the year will be an open day with three-times world champion, Nick Matthew!  Adam is liaising with Matthew and with Dunlop to provide a Dunlop Masterclass & Exhibition day, to include junior and adult coaching and an exhibition match.

More news soon on these events.

Club Championships Are Go

Now you’ve got your diary out, please remember (or make a note now) that Club Finals Day is Saturday 25th April.

All tournament events are well underway, building towards what should be a series of epic matches that day. We’d love to have a packed house of players and spectators, and their families.

Resurgence In Ladies Squash and Squash57

It’s great to see that there are promising signs of the start of a resurgence in the number of ladies playing squash and squash57 at our club.

This month we have 5 ladies in the squash boxes and 4 in the squash57 boxes, and Grace is now running weekly ladies squash coaching sessions for beginners and improvers, and a monthly session for the Herts County ladies squad.

There are even tentative thoughts about entering a team into the 2020/21 Herts Ladies League, which would be fantastic after a gap of about 10 years since we last had a ladies squash team.

Continued Growth In Squash57

Talking about resurgences, it’s fabulous that this month we have 12x squash57 boxes!  We haven’t had that many since the heady days when the likes of Scott Rickard were involved.  Thank you to Mark Tanzer for driving this growth with his brilliant enthusiasm and persistence!

The strength in depth of the boxes is growing too, partly due to the new fascination for the sport from the tennis coaches.  It’s great to see more tennis players crossing over to give squash57 a go.  Squash57 is a such a great 45 minute HIIT workout that can be played whatever the weather.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

While we’re thanking people, it’s long overdue to thank our sponsors for helping us run our 1st team and contribute to our annual court maintenance costs (a contribution boosted by the SquashSkills coaching camp last month).

Linksap Europe sponsor our 1st team.  Berkhamsted Sports, Oakley’s Estate Agents, JKT Property Management and (coming soon) DM Interactive Digital and DM Golf sponsor our tin advertising boards.

Guys, your valuable support is much appreciated!

Court Improvement Projects

This coming Monday and Tuesday, new flooring will be fitted in the squash corridor, as the final follow-on work to the installation of glass backwalls to courts 5 and 6 in 2019.

We will then be looking into a couple of low cost continuous improvement actions in the coming months.

However, we would like everyone’s help on something, please, to keep our courts in excellent condition.

We all know not to wear non-marking squash/squash57 footwear on the courts.  No black soled trainers please! But there is also quite a lot a lot of mud and dirt being brought onto the courts.  If you arrive ready changed, as many of us do, please restrict that to your clothes and not your shoes; please don’t wear your squash/squash57 shoes from the car to the clubhouse.

And on that note we’ll sign off.  Until next time,

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