Squash Madness
Its that time of year, with fans filling out an NCAA Basketball tournament bracket, even if they haven’t watched a single game all season, and following the next three weeks of “March Madness” to see how their prognostications fare. Unlike major squash tournaments, where chalk is king, upsets few, and we see Paul Coll playing Mostafa Asal in the final of every major, March Madness is filled with surprise results ( gate crashers in squash speak) magical buzzer beaters and Cinderella stories, with the perfect bracket virtually unattainable. To that end, Squash Radio is pleased to unveil our first ever, extremely subjective, “Squash Madness” bracket in which the power brokers of the sport go head to head to determine the most intriguing, important and influential in the game. The original idea was to throw a mix of squash people into four brackets of sixteen and decide who would advance through the “tournament”. After some thought, we opted to “organize” by category as deciding if Rob Owen was more important to the game than the Squash Site admins was not an exercise we wished to subject ourselves or anyone else to ( although having them debate that would be awesome viewing!)
The four categories:
Players: Active PSA tour members seeded on their current status and/or potential influence should they become World #1, win a World Championship or Olympic medal
Coaches: Active college or PSA
Media: Podcasting, blogging, website, social media, broadcasting
Administrators : Promoters, sponsors and governing body leaders.
The brackets were seeded based on who we thought are most important to the overall landscape of the game, which is why in the players bracket, for example, you see Satomi Watanabe seeded higher than Hania El Hammamy, due to the influence of Japanese media and what it would mean to have a Japanese star on the PSA tour. The same holds true for Sivasangari Subramanium, whose recovery from a near fatal car accident is the kind of story that could capture the medias attention in the lead up to the Olympics.
For the other brackets, we tried to include figures that may not receive the notoriety they deserve. While Mark Walter is known to every squash fan as the financial driving force behind the PSA tour, many of you may not be familiar w Goran Haq, who has been instrumental in the rise of the Houston Squash Club as a mecca for major squash events in, of all places, Texas, as well as the rebirth of the upcoming Swedish Open.
Squash fans all recognize Joey Barrington, the face of SquashTV, but Dan Dobby, the manager behind the scenes of the streaming service, is likely someone you are not familiar with.
The coaches bracket, while being the most straight forward, was probably the toughest to fill, as we had more candidates than bracket slots. If nothing else, the exercise certainly shone a light on how few women coaches there are on the PSA tour
You may notice that the brackets, like Squash Radio, lean heavily towards the pro game. The real hero’s of squash are in the clubs and grassroot programs, but, like the Dukes, UConn’s, Kansas and UCLA’s of the world, the spotlight shines brightest on the bluebloods!
Follow along on Instagram: @bucksquash1904 for daily polls to determine the winner of each matchup , and listen to the Squash Radio Podcast and see who advances to the Final Four!
