All my life, I had grown up playing tennis for many reasons, and those reasons were for other people and not myself. My dad had played in college, and so had all five of the rest of his brothers. I felt this pressure to pick up a tennis racket to impress them, and not because I enjoyed it myself.

When I was a freshman in high school, a new varsity sport had been created called, “squash.” This novel addition sparked curiosity and offered a unique opportunity to break away from the well-trodden path of tennis. Many people saw that and thought they were talking about the vegetable because it was not a thing in the South. My high school was the only team in Tennessee and our closest competition was Westminster from Atlanta. We would travel all over the country, mainly the North where it was the most popular, to showcase that our team from Tennessee could compete with them.

Upon picking up the squash racket, I felt free in a way that I never had compared to the tennis racket. The pressure I had seemed to slowly diminish and I started to fall in love with the sport. I became determined to start a new age of squash in the South, and in doing so, I was able to lead my team to Nationals while being Captain in my junior and senior years. Never would I have thought that the team would have progressed as much as it did. We were able to finish fifteen in the country last year at Nationals, and seeing as my squash career is now over, I can gladly say that I did not regret my decision to make the switch.