US Open:Going for Gold!

US Squash, as with most governing bodies, is a target for criticism, deserved in some cases, gratuitous in others. While the Association has been sucsessful in some of their intiatives, mostly on the the junior side (someone asked me recently, and I quote “does US Squash know that adults also play squash?”, but that is a blog for a different day) what they are actually good at is marketing, or should I say, coming up with marketing taglines and program names. I say this from a place of pure ego, as , from 2007-2024 I was the one who came up with the majority of them (the names, not the programs). Unfortunately most USQ initiatives fade away after the hoopla of the intial release, see “SPA” “Make it Count” “Play Squash” etc. Aside from nearly every Squash Magazine (RIP) cover headline, the only program or product that still has my naming DNA on it is “Club Locker”, tombstone worthy stuff no doubt!

With the Olympics on the horizon, if , by horizon, you mean three summers from now, USQ has gone into overdrive announcing initiatives related to the 2028 LA Games, the most recent ones being the “Drive to LA28” campaign ( great name, Missing Persons would be proud!) with the stated goal being to “provide a significant impact on Team USA Squash, the Player Development Pathway and the growth of the sport towards the LA28 Olympic Games” and, somewhat redundantly, the “Player Development Pathway” which is branded as a “groundbreaking initiative designed to identify and nurture future squash champions by providing them with the training, coaching, and competitive opportunities needed to maximize their potential”. Some more cynical than myself might say that a large part of US Squash’ job is identifying and nurturing future champions, but tossing “groundbreaking” into the press release made me nostalgic for an LA28 driven initiative from this past March that seems to have lost some of its early golden sheen. “The United Sports Collective”, in which the Association joined up with US Sailing, US Fencing, US Rowing and US Cycling with a stated goal to “Provide Meaningful Engagement to Approximately 350,000 Diverse Families Through Thousands of Owned and Sanctioned Events”. While some might scoff at the idea of the most culturally elite sports using the word “diverse” in their press release, (maybe they were afraid of being sued for infringement by Michael Rubin) the banding together of governing bodies with likely the most affluent membership demographics in the country is either a really forward thinking idea or a realization that, as individual orgs, they have failed at fundraising. While I hope for the sake of the sport it’s the former, looking at the Professional Squash Associations tournament page this week, it seems more likely the latter. The US Open Squash Championships, which according to the US Squash website is “ the most prestigious squash tournament in the United States and one of the most significant in the world on the Professional Squash Association (PSA) World Tour”, has been downgraded from Platinum status, with prize money dropping from $213,000 to $109, 500. With the US constantly being hailed as the global leader in the growth of squash, the optics of this are terrible, to say the very least. While press releases and headlines ballyhooing the next groundbreaking idea that is going to move the sport forward are great, results are the only thing that matter. Movie lots are made up of facades, with no real structure behind them, and while that may be cool for ten days of Olympic squash, real foundations are needed to keep our sport alive. “Going for Gold” may be a great tagline, but, in this case, it’s certainly a huge step backward.

BB