Image via Wikipedia

Squash!

For those of you who think I’m talking about juice or about the verb to squash,i’m definetly not talking about either. I’m talking about the sport squash. Squash is like tennis, it’s a racquet sport with 2 players and the ball has to get in between certain lines but squash is played against a wall,the ball when you hit it before it’s warmed up is like a stone and it’s a lot faster than tennis. I’m talking really fast,the amount of times when I’ve run ino walls because I’ve been running too fast after the ball.

 Usually you see these weird sports and you think ‘how on earth do they get involved in that?’  I don’t know what made me want to play,I don’t even know if at the start I wanted to play. But I do remember when and where I started playing.It was the summer holidays of 2009 and me and my dad,who had once been a regular squash player went down to a sports center to play.My sister had been doing a sports course there and we thought we could drop her off,play squash and then pick her up.  I walked into the court and realised I knew absolutely nothing about the sport,not a peep.My dad was a good teacher (after all that’s his proffesion) and he was always a lot less degrading than my mum who points out every little mistake I make when she’s listening to me playing my instument. We learnt slow that first week,I couldn’t throtle the ball,instead I weakly hit it off the wall and I spent forever trying to learn how to serve.Infact the easiest part was learning the rules like when you serve you have to stand in the service box and hit the ball above the service line and ensure that it comes past the red line which is infront of the service box. My first week hadn’t been enough to make it a regular routine around half a year later when I was 11 my mum invited my two friends and my sister to play squash with us. It lasted about 5 months,it was a great way to catch up with my friends but they weren’t very good at it and didn’t see the same joy I saw in it.In the end we were busy with various commitments and it ended.

Image via Wikipedia

Squash ball,the two dots on it shows how hard the ball is to hit.

It was 9  months until I played regularly again. Hockey was over for the season and that left my Tuesdays free also my grandparents had bought me a squash racquet of my own but that was way back in November. What really sealed my fate was that my dad had got a squash racquer for his birthday. Getting back on the court was nothing special each week I was improving,serving was getting better,skill was getting better. I was able to hit it harder and harder and harder. My improvisation didn’t really hit me until June 2011. At school we had begun playing rounders. I wasn’t looking forward to it,usually the only thing that I contributed to my team was a dominating left hand to suprise the other team.Usually I missed the ball,usually when I hit the ball I hit it into the open hands of a fielder,usually when fielding I could never catch the ball. This year I hit the ball each and every time,the ball was a lot easier to hit than a squash ball but I continued to hit the ball like it was a squash ball sending it,far,far away.This year I could catch a ball,I could throw a ball . I realised that I was good at squash. 

When I hit the squash ball with the fiercest strength it is like I have batted away all that I was angry about.When I run for it I feel I can run round the globe for that annoying ball.It is tough,sometimes my eyes go funny and I start to see blue and purple emerging from that white,white wall.Sometimes I feel like I could faint. But the satisfaction of hitting it of seeing your opponent slow when they know that they can’t hit the ball back,it’s amazing. I haven’nt beaten either of my parents yet,I have been close though and maybe one day…

Comment below or on your page How did I do on this piece? Susie xx