Saturday November 6th, 2010
World Squash Day Theme: 20/10 for 2010
The theme for this year’s World Squash Day on November 6 is to encourage clubs and associations all over the globe to increase playing numbers.
So, on November 6th, the challenge for every club in the world is to attract:
20 new junior players and
10 new adult members
World Squash Day is supported by the World Squash Federation (WSF), and Chief Executive Andrew Shelley says: “This is a wonderful idea to create an explosive worldwide rise in participation levels.
“Countries like Egypt are leading the way when it comes to producing wave after wave of fantastic junior players but the springboard for this is the sheer number of juniors at nearly every club in the country.
“If other nations wish to compete at the highest level then the starting point is to increase junior participation levels - as part of the main thrust to ensure that the lifeblood of our sport, the next generation, keeps expanding of course".
World Squash Day founder Alan Thatcher, chairman of the Kent SRA in England, added: “Squash has a massive worldwide following with some 20 million players enjoying the game in more than 120 countries.
“Participation levels are increasing in a huge number of countries but here in the UK the game has suffered because of court closures. However, it has been heartening to see that trend being reversed in many regions.
“The single most important thing that we can do for the sport is to bring on a new generation of squash players to safeguard the future of the sport.
“Therefore it is essential that clubs and squash associations all over the globe get behind World Squash Day to produce a significant increase in participation levels.”
Last year World Squash Day generated a massive global show of support for squash’s Olympic bid.
This year clubs and federations can announce their activities on the event website (www.worldsquashday.com)
Thatcher added: “The website has a list of ideas for clubs to get involved and organise events to showcase our fantastic sport.”
Canterbury Squash Club
ReplyDeleteAt Canterbury we have suffered a drop in membership numbers in the last few years. We managed to reverse this trend with a couple of promotions last year.
Our annual membership is £200 a year for an adult which includes everything, no light fees, court fees etc.. So you can play as many times as you want for £200 a year, plus you get 24 hour access to the courts, 7 days a week. The problem we have is that so many of our existing members have never been a member of any other squash clubs, so none of them know about court fees, light fees etc and the fact that virtually no other club in the country offers a one off annual fee with everything included and 24 hour access to boot! As a result, it was difficult to get this point across and it didn't appeal as an incredible bargain as they had nothing to compare it to apart from another club downt he road operated out of a sports centre so they just made the asusmption, it's more expensive as it has a gym, pool, tennis etc...!!
We ended up doing a campaign where all new members that joined, would only pay £120 for the first year and all existing members that introduced any new members would be rewarded with a £10 discount off their membership fees for that year, One of our members managed to get 5 new members so he saved himself £50 and made the club £600!
We ended up getting 43 new members using this promotion drive and because of this, the committee decided to actually lower the membership fees this year (for the first time in many years!!) for all existing members to £180 a year!
We are continuing with this campaign for this year and have already signed up a handful of new members in the last month!
Joe Magor
Club Captain