College squash teams

[Anonymous]

Until recently, squash was only available at private clubs. So yes, you had to be reasonably affluent to play.

But you didn’t need to be rich and fancy. My kid learned to play at a normal club with normal prices. We are government workers. My son’s state school In the Midwest has squash.

OP, your post sounds like you are a reverse snob, even if you don’t mean to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s silly. It is not inequitable to spend one’s own money how one chooses. That is very different from having scholarships for so called elite sports. Apples and oranges.

Okay but that means it’s a rich kid sport. Get real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Until recently, squash was only available at private clubs. So yes, you had to be reasonably affluent to play.

But you didn’t need to be rich and fancy. My kid learned to play at a normal club with normal prices. We are government workers. My son’s state school In the Midwest has squash.

OP, your post sounds like you are a reverse snob, even if you don’t mean to.

Agree with this completely. My child also plays squash and has become highly nationally ranked, but we are not rich and don't belong to a country club. He just plays at local courts. We know lots and lots of families like this. Squash may have been a rich-person's sport a generation or so ago, but no longer.

Squash has also become incredibly competitive. It used to be a pretty good way to get into the Ivies, but now there are so many more players and the schools are recruiting the best players from around the world. It's become very hard to get recruited to play at most colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Until recently, squash was only available at private clubs. So yes, you had to be reasonably affluent to play.

But you didn’t need to be rich and fancy. My kid learned to play at a normal club with normal prices. We are government workers. My son’s state school In the Midwest has squash.

OP, your post sounds like you are a reverse snob, even if you don’t mean to.

Agree with this completely. My child also plays squash and has become highly nationally ranked, but we are not rich and don't belong to a country club. He just plays at local courts. We know lots and lots of families like this. Squash may have been a rich-person's sport a generation or so ago, but no longer.

Squash has also become incredibly competitive. It used to be a pretty good way to get into the Ivies, but now there are so many more players and the schools are recruiting the best players from around the world. It's become very hard to get recruited to play at most colleges.

That all sounds nice... but squash in college is still largely a rich people sport if you look at the backgrounds of the teams at top squash schools (Trinity, Harvard, Yale). Yale's men's team has two kids who went to public schools and they're two of the richest school districts in the country (Darien, CT & Lower Marion, PA). By contrast, they have three kids from a single private w/ a national championship HS team. Yale's women's team has ZERO kids who went to public school (vs 7 kids who went to expensive international private schools).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Until recently, squash was only available at private clubs. So yes, you had to be reasonably affluent to play.

But you didn’t need to be rich and fancy. My kid learned to play at a normal club with normal prices. We are government workers. My son’s state school In the Midwest has squash.

OP, your post sounds like you are a reverse snob, even if you don’t mean to.

Agree with this completely. My child also plays squash and has become highly nationally ranked, but we are not rich and don't belong to a country club. He just plays at local courts. We know lots and lots of families like this. Squash may have been a rich-person's sport a generation or so ago, but no longer.

Squash has also become incredibly competitive. It used to be a pretty good way to get into the Ivies, but now there are so many more players and the schools are recruiting the best players from around the world. It's become very hard to get recruited to play at most colleges.

That all sounds nice... but squash in college is still largely a rich people sport if you look at the backgrounds of the teams at top squash schools (Trinity, Harvard, Yale). Yale's men's team has two kids who went to public schools and they're two of the richest school districts in the country (Darien, CT & Lower Marion, PA). By contrast, they have three kids from a single private w/ a national championship HS team. Yale's women's team has ZERO kids who went to public school (vs 7 kids who went to expensive international private schools).

Btw, I picked Yale not because it was an outlier in this respect, but because it had the most kids listed. The Harvard rosters look very incomplete, but currently feature a combined total of one public school kid... again, from Darien. Also the rosters are, again, heavily international kids from $$ private (often boarding) schools.