IMPORTANT NOTE: Covid19 forced the interruption of our 12 years streak of Winter Leagues. There is still uncertainty on how this season will shape up and what we’ll do and offer for players. We surveyed our entire community including all participants of leagues in the past 4 seasons and asked for their feedback about what we should do this season. Based on that feedback and input from league and PCS organizers we are going to offer a league this coming season. Conditions for play may change and the league may not run and may be cancelled at any time at the sole discretion of the league commissioner and/or PCS.
We are still unsure of the exact details. It is clear that our numbers will NOT approach the numbers we have had over the past 4-5 years. Our offering will reflect that and will be tailored for trying to balance the needs of the players, our community, PCS and the league organizers.
What we are reasonably confident of as of now (Late November 2021):
Season will likely start in early January 2022 and complete by end of March or early April
All players and spectators MUST be vaccinated — no exceptions
All play will be in person on the date and time scheduled by the league
Team size will be 7 or 9 players
League play will probably only be on Monday nights and maybe some Tuesdays, playoffs may use both Monday and Tuesday nights
Covid19 may have “squashed” our sport, our local play, our leagues, our box-leagues but our spirit and enthusiasm remains strong!! Portland Community Squash is gradually returning to somewhat normalcy and more and more “trusted pods” are playing.
Beginning in May (yeah, 2 weeks from now!!) we’re going to restart the box league with some abbreviated rules that have yet to be finalized. The concept of a “box” would probably be a group of players within a group of “pods” or trusted household units. We’d forgo the traditional promotion/demotion when the box is reset at the end of each month. As conditions and vaccines change the landscape we’d adjust the league to allow for the league to gradually expand back to full operation.
The following video on youtube has some incredible examples of great squash technique:
This video is from 2/5/2016 and was taken on the glass court at Bates College after a collegiate match. The top two Bates men players were playing a friendly game. Video shows 120fps of part of a single point.
The slow motion has excellent examples of forehands, backhands, volleys, corner retrieval, footwork and lunging all in incredible detail. With one lefty and one righty you can see great technical skill from multiple perspectives. It is magical!
Players are Ahmed Abdel Khalek, former 2x CSA National Champion and Ahmed Hatata, former CSA All American.
The NESCACs Men’s team championship is at Bowdoin College this weekend
The NESCACs (New England Small College Athletic Conference) are an 11 team group of really good collegiate squash teams. The Men’s Team Championships are being held at Bowdoin College beginning tomorrow, Friday, February 14th, 2020 at 5pm.
This is a rare opportunity to see great squash teams gathered here in Maine for an extended series of matches. Don’t miss it!!
Many of the matchups for this tournament are battling for the final rankings for the College Squash Associations annual championship and these closely matched teams will likely make or break their season based on the results this weekend. There will be many good matches and excellent squash!!
