Fun
Dynamic
Challenging
Satisfying
Our Story
Milo Miller ’28 fell in love with squash at age 11 because, “the angles!” In September of his freshman year, he learned that MA Squash was trying to expand squash into more public schools – would he like to round up a few classmates to form a team at CRLS? His immediate response: “Let’s do it.” He wanted more kids to be able to try his favorite sport, or “at least know it’s not just a vegetable.” A week later, he had obtained the support of Harvard University’s varsity coaches, piqued the curiosity of several classmates, and convinced an Arlington squash friend’s parent/coach to help form a joint Cambridge-Arlington team. He started bringing kids to play at Harvard Murr and MIT, and discovered that once they got on court they were easily hooked—squash sold itself. Later came support from Naji Khan, local squash pro, as well as several enthusiastic CRLS parents and volunteers. So we ran with that!
In our first year, 2024-25, we managed to introduce the sport of squash to 50+ public school students, field a joint Cambridge-Arlington team, play 7 matches against area teams, and participate in the Boston Area Public School Squash Tournament, hosted by SquashBusters.
In our second year, 2025-26, CRLS split from Arlington to form its own public school squash team. 35 students attended our Open Houses and 31 returned for tryouts! Originally we were only planning to accept 16 students, but thanks to the generous funding we received from CRLS Clubs, we were able to secure additional court time at Harvard Murr so we could expand our program to 26. We are grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from our school, as well as the local squash community.
With its inclusion in the 2028 L.A. Summer Olympics, squash is poised to enter the world stage, and its profile, appeal, and popularity will undoubtedly grow. We hope our program will help to diversify the sport and improve its accessibility and visibility in our local communities.
Our First Official CRLS Team Season (Winter 2025-2026)
This year, CRLS and Arlington HS decided to split into two separate public high school teams.
CRLS Squash is an official school club sport. In September, a few of our players fielded a table at “Club Week,” where they presented basic club information and collected signatures from interested students.
In November, we held three Open Houses – 35 students came out to the Harvard Murr Center to try squash.
We held two Tryout dates, where 31 enthusiastic students returned to try out for the team. Originally, we intended to take a maximum of 16 players, but interest was so strong that we decided to create two groups, a “Varsity” squad and a “Developmental” squad, with consecutive practice sessions. This allowed us to take on a total of 26 players, and was made possible by securing additional funding from CRLS Clubs to cover our extra court costs, and by our volunteer coaches’ incredible generosity with their time and energy.
Our players practiced 3x/week, learning fundamentals of the game, working on drills, fitness, movement, and playing games and increasingly competitive challenge matches against each other to establish our team ladder.
This season we played a total of 11 matches, including 6 all-team matches, where every single player was able to compete. 14 of our players now have official US Squash ratings on Club Locker.
We competed against: Arlington HS, Wellesley HS, Brookline HS, Beaver Country Day School, SquashWest Acton, SquashBusters Boston, SquashBusters Lawrence, SquashBusters Providence.
We capped off our season with our (now traditional) Friday the 13th “in-house tournament,” where players divided into two teams, captained by Milo (Tough Tigers) and Benton (Fluffy Kittens). This was followed by our end-of-season pizza party, complete with a squash ball cake.
We also got a nice writeup in the Cambridge Day news!
Appreciation
Our Inaugural Season
(Winter 2024-2025)
September 2024: The Cambridge Squash Alliance was formed to promote public school squash.
October
Cambridge and Arlington squash players agreed to form a joint public school squash team. Recruited volunteer coaches.
November
11/6: CRLS Squash attained school club status.
11/11: After much bureaucracy, we were able to secure court rentals from Harvard Murr Center!
11/22: We held 3 Squash Open Houses, and it became pretty clear that this sport sells itself! Once kids got on court they came back – participation grew from 18 kids at Open House #1, to 30 at #2, to 36 kids at #3. The courts were packed – the Harvard coaches were pretty impressed with our energy and enthusiasm!
December
24 students officially registered for our program – the absolute maximum we could take! Practices began at the Murr Center. Naji Khan and several assistants and parent volunteers all helped out to make sure students got started.
Players learned basic strokes and rules of the game. They started by playing games (to 11), and eventually matches (best of 5 games). They also learned how to referee and keep official scoresheets – extremely important as junior squash matches are all peer-reffed. This is one of the nicest parts of team and tournament play – after playing a match, the two competitors who just finished sit together to referee the next match on court – this forces competitors to acknowledge each other and to work together, helping to develop sportsmanship as well as friendships.
January
We started playing official “Challenge Matches” to establish our squash ladder. Lots of close matches and good competition among our beginners!
Team t-shirts arrived! A huge thank you to Lauren Holleran for taking care of all the logistics for getting these designed and ordered!!
1/18: We kicked off our season with our first match against Acton-Boxborough, out at SquashWest. We officially lost 3-4, but went 5-5 with the 10 players we brought! It was great to see our brand new players jumping into match play.
1/19: We brought a team of 8 players to the Boston Public Schools Tournament at SquashBusters’ Northeastern facility. We played three teams, SquashBusters Boston, SquashBusters Lawrence, and Wellesley. A lot of excitement in our final match, we were tied 3-3 with Wellesley, with our #1 seed left to determine the outcome – quite a crowd gathered to watch as he battled back from down 0-2 games to win 3-2 and our team was able to claim victory, 4-3. In addition to getting some solid playing experience, our beginners got to watch some pretty high-level squash too. Tons of fun and great energy all around!
1/24: We hosted our first Home match against Brookline last Friday and it was a huge success! Brookline brought both their Varsity and JV teams, as well as some of their Girls’ team, and all of our players who felt ready to compete were able to get a match. Our team did a good job with reffing, acted as gracious hosts, and our t-shirts looked super sharp (thanks again to Lauren Holleran!). Tom Arria (CRLS’s athletic director) even stopped by to check us out!
We continued to play challenge matches at our practices and several kids on our team now have squash ratings on Club Locker – an important milestone for any squash player! (To “get on the board” a player must win a match and lose a match against players who have ratings).
1/29: We hosted a competitive match against Wellesley. Though “officially” we lost 4-3 several of our beginners got to play and gained some great experience.
February
2/5: We traveled to Boston University to play Beaver Country Day School. A couple of our players played to five games, demonstrating excellent match-ups.
2/12: We hosted Concord-Carlisle at the Murr, a large team with many beginner players. All of our players who felt ready to compete were able to get a match!
2/14: For our grand Valentine’s Day finale, we split into two teams and played an “in-house” tournament. All players participated, and we included a few middle schoolers too. This was followed by a pizza/pickleball party and a truly memorable squash ball cake!
Appreciation