The Junior Squash Club is formed from the junior membership of the Club. It meets on Saturdays and provides coaching and supervised play. Its aims are to introduce children to the sport, to help them develop their skills, and to provide them with an opportunity for supervised play.

Information on the dates, prices and details can be found on the Application Form.

Coaching Sessions

These are held on Saturday afternoons starting October 31st. There will be 14 coached sessions on Saturdays (6 before Christmas and 8 after). The Juniors are divided into groups on the basis of age and playing ability. The youngest players start at 4 pm. The exact arrangements will be decided once we know the total numbers.

Junior Club night

We will hold a Junior Club night if there is enough interest and willingness to participate by children and their parents. Supervision is required by volunteer parents. It is open to all junior members giving them an opportunity for further games.

Volunteers

The coaching sessions are organised and coached by Amanda Jones and professional coach Don Wilkie. We rely on parents who can give some of their time to help both for the coaching sessions and any Junior Club night. It is not necessary for you to be able to play squash but we would particularly encourage squash playing parents to volunteer their services.
Please contact Amanda if you can help in any way, even for a few sessions.

Eye protection

It is the policy of Scottish Squash that children participating in any squash tournament wear eye protection. Although eye injuries are very rare, we have to recognise that the risk is greater with younger and less experienced players. We cannot ignore the advice of Scottish Squash and children must use eye protection whilst playing at the Club.

Protective goggles cost between about £15 and £25. We provide goggles for the Junior Squash sessions but we need to make a charge of £5 to be added to the Junior Squash Club fee. If your son or daughter is interested in team squash, we recommend that they buy their own equipment.

Footwear

Shoes worn on the squash courts should be of the non-marking variety (in general black soled shoes should not be worn). They should be free of dirt and grit and should not be worn outdoors. In particular we discourage the use of shoes which have been worn on the tennis courts due to the sand that they carry onto the courts making them slippery and dangerous. We ask parents to ensure that children have appropriate footwear.

Supervision

The Club welcomes junior members. We want to provide them with an opportunity to develop their interest in the game and to develop their skills. However, we have to be concerned about their safety whilst playing and with the security and care of our premises.

We want to remind parents that there is nobody employed to monitor the activities in the Club. It is quite normal for the Club to be empty, particularly on Friday or weekend evenings and during the daytime on weekdays. We would not be taking proper responsibility either for the safety of our members or the security of the clubhouse if we permitted young children to use the facilities without any adult presence.

Junior members under the age of 14 may only use the squash courts when they are with a responsible adult. We regret that this decision may restrict the opportunity for Junior play. However, we believe that this is an inevitable consequence for a Club which employs minimal staff and which relies on the volunteers for its management.

One of the reasons for forming the Junior Squash Club is to provide an opportunity for younger children to play whilst being supervised. We would like to encourage parents to extend the playing opportunities for juniors by bringing their children to the Club at other times.

We hope that you understand the reasons for these cautions which are designed both to protect your child and to protect the interests of the Club. We do hope that your children will take this opportunity to be involved in the sport and enjoy the game.

If you need any further information, please contact Amanda Jones.