Flashes

Adult Beginner Classes

For: Beginners - good Beginners

Introduction: Squash is a lifetime sport, and  a fun activity the whole family can participate in. A program for adult beginners and good beginners, run by one of the area’s top squash pros, Connie Barnes will be held at Chevy Chase Athletic Club. The program will emphasize squash techniques and strategies, fitness and sportsmanship.

Dates: commences Mar 4

Times: Sundays 11:30am-12:30pm (session runs 6 weeks)

Cost: $90 - FOR 6 CLASSES CCAC MEMBER

         $150 - FOR 6 CLASSES CCAC NON MEMBERS,

          NCS MEMBERS RECEIVE $30 DISCOUNT OFF NON MEMBER RATE

Equipment required: Non-marking shoes, (other equipment supplied or may be purchased from Connie)CIVL

Director Connie Barnes - Director of Squash@the Chase, Phone: 301-807-9905, Email: conniesquash@gmail.com

Beginner class: ONLINE Payment:

Fast Feet Classes for Adults and Juniors

'Fast Feet' squash fitness clinics - these classes are designed for Juniors and adults who want to improve their anticipation and speed around the court. Improvements in speed and strength to be able to be faster, more mobile and more stable when striking the ball are noticeable within a few weeks.

 Instructors - Connie and Jacqueline

 Days and times:

Monday 7 - 8pm (Juniors),

Tues 6 - 7pm (Adults), and

Sun 12 - 1pm (Juniors/ Adults)

 Price:  $150 for 10 weeks

 Commencement Date: Mon Nov 28.

ONLINE Application Form:

STOP:  Before providing payment with "Buy Now" button you must submit your details on the form above and click the "Submit Entry Form" button.

ONLINE Payment:

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Studio 5454 party at Chevy Chase Athletic Club

**Grand Opening of the new squash courts and revamped Club**.

There is no cost for the party however the event is to raise funds for SquashEmpower an urban youth program based at CCAC which provides squash coaching and academic tutoring to underserved DC youth. Donations thankfully accepted at www.squashempower.org

Hosts:: Connie Barnes and Steve White
Date:: Dec 10, 2011 Saturday night
Time:: 7pm - 11 pm

Wine tasting, beer and wine, and (thanks to our brilliant chef-at-large Joel Bernstein)
 

the tastiest hors d'oeuvre provided

 Registration (one per person) - is mandatory to assist with catering purposes, you will receive a confirmation.

To access the party come to 5454 Wisconsin Ave, the site of the 18 story Barlow Building. Catch the elevator to the 18th floor, or the 17th floor and the stairs to the 18th floor.  The club occupies the entire 18th floor. Underground parking at the back of 5454 is available until 10pm. Street parking is available.

Pre-Party Clinics with PSA Stars Ryan Cuskelly and Zac Alexander

Register Here (Cost $40pp)

Four Good Reasons to Play NCS league Squash

 From left: Teddy Weiss, Kira Keating, Jacq Barnes and Schuyler Haynes. 

When Chevy Chase AC took on University Club in the NCS  "normally mainly male" Div 3 league recently, it could have ended up an all girl affair - perhaps a first in NCS history. However UClub regulars Marian Lurio and Margret Smith had a night off, but still, four ladies in a div 3 match up  is a great showing, and it representative of how many women are taking up the game through college and returning home to brighten up the league. It also shows just how strong they can play, with two of these girls at 15 (Kira) ,16 (Jacq) yo regularly winning matches in the Div 3 league!

Free Squash Day at Chevy Chase Athletic Center!!

The sessions are free but it is necessary to register so that we have coaching staff and volunteers available, numbers are restricted. Parents are invited to use the club free of charge (treadmills, group exercise class, elliptical, free weights etc) personal trainers will be onsite and free functionality tests will be provided.

The sessions are available to new students to squash. All equipment provided, please wear non marking shoes.

When - June 5 Sunday

Times -

session 1 June 5 1 - 2pm Elementary school students
session 2 June 5 2 - 3pm Middle school students
session 3 June 5 3 - 4pm High School / college students

We are also offering free sessions for parents to learn squash!

sessions 4 June 5 10 - 11am complete novice
session 5 June 5 11 - 12 noon have played a little before

Where -

Chevy Chase Athletic Club

Barlow Building

18th Floor

5454 Wisconsin Ave

Chevy Chase

MD 20815

 

Parking back of building entry is via The Hills Plaza: Enter where sign says Parking 5454 Wisconsin Ave (at Friendship Heights metro)

Register at:

Handicap Tournaments (Monthly)

Spring and Summer Camps 2010

Spring break camps will be held Mar 29 through April 2, please see the attached for details on levels/ cost/ clubs  etc. Camps are divided into beginners - good beginners and Intermediate - advanced, cost is $40 per 2.5 hr session. Last summer we had 123 participants and parents/ participants rated our camps as 9.7/ 10!

http://www.aussienicksquash.com/news/news.htm#summercamps

Summer camps will be as terrific as ever and we have 3 levels -

1 Fun Junior camp - First is the Fun Junior squash camp for the 7 – 12 yr old beginner – good beginner – this is a great way to introduce your child to squash – they will enjoy learning basic squash technique and playing games and participating in table tennis, chess, board games, swimming, movies and more!

2 Novice - JV level camp

The second type of camp we offer is for novice through to JV players. The coaching staff have unique squash abilities and talent to teach your child skills to prepare for JV level squash

3 JV - Varsity level camp

JV - Varsity level camp - our team of experts will work with JV - V level players to bring them to the next level for the start of the squash season. Emphasis of technique, strategy and fitness: see this page  http://www.aussienicksquash.com/juniors/juniors.htm#zummer  Local Camps 2010 for all the details. For your convenience and subject to coaching staff availability, camps are available to be attended on a daily and half daily basis. Cost for Daily add 10% cost for half days add 15%. For example if you wanted your child to attend 3 days the cost is $99 per day for members. 

Register soon!

S&H Varsity Winners for 2010

It was an outstanding finish to a great season The Div 2 champions were decided by the 7th and last match. Landon 2 and Whitman 2 were 3 matches each when Mike Hunter and Neal Malkani stepped on court. The atmosphere was very exciting (and loud!). They went to 2 - 2 and then paced through each point of the last game with an amazing amount of cheering from the participants. Mike finally prevailed winning 14-12 giving Landon 2 a terrific win for the season. Congratulations to Alex Duplessie (who was among the loudest of the cheerers) Clive Chang and Dr Goodwin.

In the Div 1 Finals; BCC 1 quickly won the first 2 matches, however Whitman prevailed winning the Championship for the 2nd time in a row. Congratulations to the Whitman team and their captain Jacq Barnes. After the matches the awards ceremony was held. The 2010 SIVL Award winners are -

MVP Alex Gangitano (Stoneridge)

MIP Joey Borden (BCC)

Both will receive an engraved glass plaque and $100 gift certificate.

Trinity Dynasty Beats Washington All-Stars in Largest Squash Match in DC History

Report by James Zug

Trinity College’s eleven-time national championship men’s squash team took on an all-star “Best of DC” squad on Monday 4 January 2010 at Bethesda Sport & Health.  Trinity won 11-2 in three hours of outstanding squash in front of nearly three hundred spectators.

A superlative evening hosted by Brad Scott, the general manager of Bethesda Sport & Health and Jonathan Adler, S&H’s chief executive officer, the event had many organizers: Page Lansdale, a Bantam squash alum, was the point person, helped greatly by Jim Martin, Connie Barnes, Rod Barnes and the Trinity Club of Washington. The refereeing for the top three matches was performed by the Tommy Bahama-shirt team of Hunt Richardson, Malcolm Jensen and Meherji Madan. There were tables groaning from the platefuls of shrimp and sandwiches and much kibitzing amongst the many friends, players, supporters and board members in the National Capital Squash community.

It was the largest crowd ever to watch a squash match in Washington. The only comparable events were the 1984 and 1986 softball nationals, both of which had more people at the Saturday evening dinner. In 1984 the party was in the restaurant above the Washington Squash & Nautilus Club, with a band and spirited dancing going well past midnight; in 1986, with more than three hundred participants and the International Squash Rackets Federation’s annual convention in town, the Saturday night party, held outdoors (in September) at the Textile Museum in Kalorama was an enormously successful bash.

This year’s event started with a large number of juniors in an hour-long clinic with the Trinity players. “It was awesome,” said Nick Mendez, a senior at Sidwell Friends, “I just wanted to it to last longer.”

For Trinity, this was the first stop on their whistle-stop four-city, post-New Years East Coast exhibition tour, and in some matches it took them a while to shake off the rust from their long drive down that day from Hartford. The only wins for Washington came at the top and bottom of the ladder. At the top was Ryan Cuskelly, the twenty-two year-old Australian pro who is based in New York near his coach Rod Martin and ranked fifty-four in the world. Brought down by a group of NCS supporters to boost the top of the lineup, he outslugged senior Baset Chaudhry, the Bantam’s #1 in a 3-0 whitetwash. Chaudhry is the two-time defending national intercollegiate champion who turned twenty-four eight days after the match. And he was ranked as high as sixty-one on the PSA tour before entering Trinity, so much was anticipated in his tilt against Cuskelly. But Cuskelly dominated from the get-go. At the bottom, Rod Barnes jumped in when Trinity showed up with thirteen players and he outlasted Greg Crane 3-1.

In between, Washington fought hard but could not pull off another win. Patrick Chifunda, the Zambian-born, Richmond-based pro currently ranked one hundred and ten in the world, lost 3-1 to junior Parth Sharma. Dan Petrie, probably the best player at the moment permanently based in Washington, performed brilliantly against sophomore Vikram Malhotra, almost taking the first game but eventually falling in some riveting squash 3-0. Jake Gross took a game off freshman Johan Detter and two of the matches went the full five-game distance: Matt Danker almost nipped freshman Juan Flores and Alex Gross nearly got past sophomore Daniel Echevarria.

Psychologically, the most fascinating match was between Hesh El Halaby and Bantam senior Supreet Singh. They met twice last February when as #6 on the ladder Princeton played Trinity: in a dual-match in mid-February (Hesh won in three) and eight days later in the finals of the national intercollegiate team championships (Hesh won in five). Both matches, played to nine points, were incredibly interesting, especially because Trinity staved off defeat overall both times in 5-4 victories. For Hesh, playing against Supreet brought back the memories of the horrific loss in the nationals: in one match, a Tiger was up 2-0, 7-2 and serving; in another a Tiger was up 2-0, 4-1; and in a third a Tiger was up 5-0 in the fifth—and yet the Bantams won all three matches. For Supreet, it was a reminder that he had lost to Hesh at a critical time. Hesh, working at a law firm in Washington, had not been playing much squash, while Supreet had been training hard. Hesh won the first game and then his lack of fitness was telling and Supreet rode out to a close-fought four-game win.

“We had a fabulous time,” said Trinity coach Paul Assaiante. “It was a thrill to play in front of such a large crowd at such a beautiful club and to see so many friends. We had a lot of good matches—Washington would be a top-five squash team if it was a college, for sure.”

The Bantams played Baltimore the next day, winning 9-3 at the Merritt Athletic Club at Bare Hills. The following day they vanquished a very strong Philadelphia squad 12-3 at Episcopal Academy. Then they played two friendlies in New York, at the New York Athletic Club and the Printing House, before returning to Hartford.

Having not lost since February 1998, Trinity has now won two hundred and six consecutive dual-matches, a record for collegiate sports in America. (The next closest are: one hundred and thirty-seven wins for Miami men’s tennis in 1957-64; Penn State women’s volleyball’s current streak of one hundred and four matches North Carolina women’s soccer’s ninety-two games in 1990-94 and the most well-known NCAA streak, the UCLA men’s basketball’s eighty-eight games in 1971-74.)

The Bantams have won eleven consecutive national titles and are heavily favored to win a twelfth next month. Their dynasty is the subject of a new book written by James Zug that Penguin is publishing in the fall of 2010. Their appearance in Washington was a milestone evening in the history of squash in this city.

Trinity Champions Tour comes to Bethesda S&H

Come see the Trinity College Men’s Varsity Squash Team play a friendly match against the best players of Washington DC on January 4, 2010 at 6:00pm at Bethesda Sport & Health.

Click here for more details on this great event.
 

- For  Historical News since 2005 go to the AussieNick Archives

AussieNick, a squash information center for adults and juniors based on the Potomac in the USA, with an emphasis on meeting the needs of squash players in the Washington DC, Suburban Virginia and Maryland regions. It was created to provide information about Junior and Adult squash, coaching, equipment, pro tips and more. AussieNick programs are associated with Sport and Heath squash courts at Chevy Chase Athletic Club, Maryland, and at the Plains in Virginia.