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World Squash Day October 2022 with Daryl Selby & Joe Lee

Phew, we’ve just about caught our breath after our tremendously successful World Squash Day event on Saturday 15th October.

We had the pleasure of Daryl Selby and Joe Lee for most of the day and evening treating our junior and senior members with coaching, sharing a court and of course an exciting exhibition match.

Firstly, the professional players took to the court with several juniors to offer coaching tips and ideas. Judging by their faces when they came off court, the juniors clearly had fun and worked hard. Well done to Freddie Jenkins, Henrick Cook, Kian Buckley, Tom Howarth, Ruth Lewis and Finley Dixon.

The next part of the day was the opportunity for some of our more intrepid members to share a court with Joe and Daryl.
Here are some of their comments –
Wayne B – Fantastic to have the opportunity to play two stars of the squash world and to experience at such close quarters how the game should be played!
Matt J – I should have stopped after going 3-0 up!! What a privilege though to get to play Daryl – I think I enjoyed his company as much as the squash – he’s quite a character and a great advocate for the game.
Chris T – It was great fun, my defining comment is probably, ‘that was a long ten minutes’.

Next came the main event. The exhibition match with Daryl and Joe was one of the most entertaining that we have ever had. They were both excellent throughout, and Daryl is definitely a showman and provided so much with the imagination and creativity of his shot play. Daryl is the Mansour Bahrami of the squash world and it was such a privilege to have him entertaining the crowds at RSC.
As you might expect, the scores were very close. Daryl took the first and third games and Joe won the second and fourth games, so it nicely came down to a fifth game which Joe took 11-7.

There were some excellent questions asked by the crowd to the players. Daryl and Joe answered loads of great questions from members for at least half an hour, providing insights into a number of topics including how a professional squash player survives financially, how training needs to be tailored according to a player’s age and how the standard of professional squash has increased over the last 10 years and who are the best and worst players to share a room with while on tour. They also mentioned their career highlights and discussed their career plans after retirement – Daryl is planning on working in sports management whereas Joe is leaning towards a career in coaching.

Afterwards everyone enjoyed Mars’ homecooked Thai chicken curry, massaman vegetable curry, noodles, rice and naan bread. A few came back for a second helping and one junior member, who shall remain nameless, even came back for a third plate! We sent Daryl back to Essex with a doggy bag too.

Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who helped, in particular to Chris Harris, Richard Campbell, Clare Wright, Lisa Pinggera, Sarah Marrington, Mars & Tim Hatari, Andrew Telford, Howard Harding, Simon Fredericks, Mike Parsons, Nick Dunning, Sam Hodgkins & Arthur Cumings.

Photos (click to enlarge)

World Squash Day 9th October 2021 Exhibition Matches

World Squash Day 2021 came to the club with a bang on Saturday night, as FOUR fine professionals graced our courts with their remarkable skills. First up, eight brave souls from our membership, both young and not quite so young, pitted their skills against these highly ranked players, each with two sessions of ten minutes. The pros were very kind, only bringing our star players to the brink of exhaustion and all survived to enjoy the exhibition matches that followed.

Jasmine Hutton, with a highest world ranking (HWR) of 37, won against Emily Whitlock (HWR 12) in straight games, in what was a thoroughly enjoyable contest, both entertaining the sizeable crowd, which included members from the tennis club and Redhill Squash Club, with some sparkling shot play and unbelievable retrievals (how do they stretch so far into the four corners?). A brief Q & A session followed, covering such diverse topics as training regimes, not panicking when behind in a match and the US tour conditions (with the toll the unsprung floors take on the body).

Then, in a family affair, the brothers Lee played some truly spectacular squash, pummelling the poor ball into the nicks at unbelievable pace and treating the crowd to some marathon rallies. The elder brother Joe (HWR 29) took the first two games, before Charlie (HWR 82) pulled back to even up the match. The deciding game was played at an even higher intensity (if that is possible) and Charlie finally took the game to win 3-2. The rowdy crowd then put the brothers on the spot by asking whether they really are better players than their dad (Danny Lee, a former stalwart of our club) moving on to the subjects of training during the time of COVID and just how do you hit a ball that hard.

Then it was down to the bar to reflect on the scintillating squash that had taken place and the sumptuous sausages on the plates. What an amazing evening!!!

Very big thanks to go the following for making the evening possible – Sam Hodgkins (for securing the players), Sarah Marrington (everything catering), Roger Crabb (bar), Howard Harding (bar), Simon fredericks (bar), Chris Harris (organising), Lisa Pinggera (admin), Sylvia Van Oevern (photographs), Richard Campbell (marker/ref) & Wayne Beglan (marker/ref).

(Click on a thumbnail below and scroll across and to view more images of the evening. Please click this link to go to the page where our members played a pro!)