Mike Sweeney, a faculty member and squash coach at the Mercersburg Academy in central Pennsylvania, contributes a story on how a Squash57 league took hold and is thriving at the boarding school’s courts–a model for other schools and communities around the country.
Here’s the story of how the Mercersburg Academy Squash 57 League came about.
First, a little background about me…my name is Mike Sweeney. I live and work in Mercersburg, PA at Mercersburg Academy, a co-ed, 9-PG boarding school of about 440 students. I have taught math and coached tennis and squash here for the past 22 years. Right now, I primarily coach the girls squash team. We have a beautiful 10-court squash facility on campus, and a long history of fielding competitive squash teams. Mark Talbott, class of ‘78 is our most famous squash alum, and there have been many others who have gone on to play college squash including current CSA players Huzaifa Ibrahim ‘24 (Trinity), Santiago Medina ‘24 (Tufts), Emilia Falconi ‘23 (Drexel), and Indira Moshi ‘24 (Tufts).
About 10 years ago I saw an article in Squash Magazine called The Little Secret Game written by James Zug, where he described a match of UK Racketball played with Richard Millman. I was playing a lot of squash at the time, and struggling with injuries, particularly a back issue. The article discussed how Squash 57 has all of the same sorts of fun and strategy as squash, but wasn’t as physically demanding on your joints. I went on ebay that day and purchased a couple of used racquetball rackets. Finding a place that sold the balls was a bit more challenging, but I managed to have them shipped to my door a few weeks later.
At the same time, my son Jack was 14, learning to play squash. I was teaching him how to play, and frankly we had hit a bit of a wall. Our time together on court used to be really fun, but as he progressed in terms of skill, and got older, it was becoming more competitive, and that took away some of the enjoyment.
I told him about Squash 57, and we gave it a try in our next session. It was so much fun to do something a little different, but still work on some of the same concepts and skills. For a long time, he was the only one I ever played S57 with. It was our little thing that we did together, and I think it really helped both of us in terms of shot selection, ball control, and just being able to be father and son on court together. It can be hard to coach your kids, and this gave us something that we could both really enjoy.
Anyway, I would go to ebay every now and then and buy rackets, 4 or 5 at a time, for cheap, thinking that I would have players on the team give it a try someday, and maybe eventually get an adult league going. Over the course of 8 or 9 years, I acquired 25 old rackets and a box of irregular blue balls purchased from Price of Bath in England. We had everything we needed.
Fast forward to December of 2024, I decided to put out a message to the adults of the Mercersburg community, faculty and staff, saying that I was starting a Squash 57 Box League. Here is the document I shared with them: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z7mOrBLg0G4941w5EOItWtkYtCAkMqdEg-NI6Ccd0aM/edit?usp=sharing
Everything they needed was at the courts. I collected names and set up a box league on ClubLocker with the help of some people at US Squash (Linda Elriani and Ricky Weisskopf). Of course, unlike squash clubs, this is all 100% free for our players. Frankly, it wasn’t very expensive for me to buy all of the rackets and balls, and I did so over the course of years, so it didn’t feel like much to just offer it all up to the community to use.
I offered a few sessions in early January to teach interested people the rules, and give them a few pointers on technique and strategy. After that we just got rolling with 25 people in the first month. Almost everyone is completely new to squash, and they are having a great time learning a new game together. There are a few guys who work as staff members in our gym who take their morning break at the courts to try to squeeze in a few games! Lots of people have caught the bug. It has been fun.
As of April 1st, we have 42 players competing in the league, and I expect that number to continue to rise. I plan to run two more monthly sessions before our summer break and then start it back up in September.