Did you know that 35% of girls aged 14-16 years old don’t take part in sports because they are not confident? This is just one of many statistics around the imbalance in sport for females versus males. This is something that we want to change here at Squash Wales. How are we going to do it we hear you ask?
Well, whilst we know that our junior girls are confident enough to show up at training every week, we want to make sure that confidence continues to shine, and can even inspire even more girls and women to get involved in the sport.
Leading up to International Women’s Day (8th March), we ran an ‘Aspire Squad’ for our junior girls in South Wales. Coached by Wales No.2 and World No.18 Emily Whitlock as well as our very own Squash Wales coach Abby Hicks – the girls came together, learnt new skills, built more confidence in their tactics and technique, but most of all worked alongside inspirational female role models in squash.
The positive response from the sessions has been overwhelmingly positive, with performance improvements already noted by other coaches since the training – so it just goes to show having interactions with role models we recognise can do wonders.
Whilst these sessions were a one-off, we really do hope to continue to inspire the younger generation of female squash players to stay confident, keep taking risks, be bold and take centre stage just like Emily, Tesni, Ali and many before them.
Check out some of the feedback from the sessions down below:
“I always love working with our talented girls.
Abby Hicks – Coach
“What a weekend it was, everyone worked so well and all have bright futures ahead of them 👏 “
Emily Whitlock – World No.18, Wales No.2
“Fantastic Day with Emily Whitlock and the other coaches. What an amazing opportunity to learn from the World’s best”
Players
“Thank you for organising the girls squad coaching and training session with Emily Whitlock. Full of praise for Emily, from being so enthusiastic, fit, knowledgeable, nice, friendly and approachable and honest. She liked the way Emily explained the task and appreciated the importance of keeping concentration and then came on court to demonstrate how you can get your opponent to move where they didn’t plan to”
Parent
“the girls were fully engaged and really motivated. A fantastic session.”
Parent
Truly EM-powering stuff if we do say so ourselves!
