Thursday 27 June 2013

The rise & fall of ladies squash Part III

Continuing the series of articles on the history of East Squash... here is the number of ladies teams in the East Leagues 1973-2012/13, by division (click picture to enlarge):
There seems to have been a weird spell 1993-1996 when they decided to only have 5 teams in Div 1, while Divs 2 & 3 kept a healthy 8 or 9 teams each.
    This seems to be a similar situation to recent years, where the 2 divisions of 2000-2006 reverted to 3 smaller divisions in an attempt to keep the levels of skill in each division as close as possible.
   Of course we are no worse off now than we were in 1980, apart from the fact that the game was on the rise back then, whereas now it is on a plateau at best. I believe this plateau is false in the women's game as the current playing population mostly took the game in the late 80's and 90's. This generation will be leaving the game over the next decade unless we bring more young females into the game. We either have to do this through a) junior programmes or b) encouraging young professionals to take up the game.
     Grange has an active programme in both camps. 
a)We have a weekly morning with Flora Stephenson's school's golden time, some females in John Bain's junior sessions and active in East junior leagues and Claire Gray's East junior squad sessions.
b) We are lucky in our catchment and females and especially encourage females to try out Club Night and then guide them into friendly mini-leagues. From there, there is coaching and a path into the East leagues teams. After a lapse of 10 years, we brought back the 2nd ladies team and it has given those keen ladies a chance to hone their skills and make the progression that inter-club play brings.
   This is all well and good but we really need to other clubs to be doing similar proactive work to ensure they maintain and augment their current crop of female players. It is good to see ESC, Waverley, Abercorn and Watsonians retain two or more teams but you have to worry about the clubs who no longer have women's teams - once the thread is broken, it is difficult to weave it back together again.
    In the next instalment, I will analyse the ladies teams on a club-by-club basis to see if we can learn anything from history to avoid making the mistakes of the past.

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