How It All Started.
I started playing squash at the age of 7. However, I had been hanging around my Dad's squash club for a long time before then.
Both my mum and dad were good club players and although my mum gave it up after giving birth to me in 1983, my dad continued to play. I was around to watch it all, taking it all in I suppose. I grew up in Lowerstoft but moved to Wales because of my dad's work. We joined a new squash club called Mellor Squash Club' which is where I had my first proper Squash lessons off my first ever coach Cliff Westwood. I really enjoyed my squash there but it wasn't until we moved again to Chorley in Lancashire because of my dad's work (again!) that I really started to make good improvements in my squash.
In Chorley we joined Clayton Green squash club and I had Saturday morning group coaching from two local squash players turned coaches, Bob Wigmore and Alan Robinson. This was a great and something I'd never experienced before and one of my first memories of doing routines and continued games. From here I continued to play at Clayton Green and was asked to play for the Ladies team down there, which was a big deal for me then and I was really excited!! By this time my dad had realised that maybe I needed some extra one to one coaching and so I went down to the popular Park Hall club and had lessons with Steve Johnson. This again was another level up from anything I'd experienced before. Steve was great with me but before long I moved again to be coached by Mike Farrington. Still at the young age of about 10 I started to have individual sessions with Mike and also went over for group sessions. Although I still went down to Clayton Green Mike became more of a regular thing and I improved greatly with him. At the age of 11, I was invited to play for Lancashire for the first time. This was great and something I really looked forward to. From this point on life got quite busy and most of family life started to revolve around my squash. My brother Christopher played also and somehow seemed to get dragged along as well being 3 years young than me.
Playing for Lancashire became a regular thing and as I was number 1 in Lancashire my dad and I started to travel further away to play tournaments and the goal was to get picked for the regional squads and to get nationally ranked. I reached both of these goals and got to be about 4 in England at under 12 level. I steadily improved this ranking until I won my first British Closed at under 14 level. I was lucky that year as the age group systems changed to under 15 and so I got to play the same event next year and won it then as well. By this time Mike had brought me along great but a new step was needed and so I moved to local Manchester based coach Annette Pilling. I would have to travel a little further for my lessons with Annette but it was important. Together with the help of my mum, dad and Annette I stayed number 1 in England in each age group throughout the juniors and won the British title at under 14, 15, 17 and twice at under 19. I also made semi final of 2 British Opens and I was runner-up in the European individual all of which I am very proud. Also throughout the juniors I represent England for the first time playing in a team event which was something very new to me and together with the team made up of 2 boys and a girl England won the under 17 and under 19 European championships.
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Pictured from left to right are Tina Rix, Jenny Duncalf, Alison Waters and Laura.
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Picking up winners medals! However the icing on the cake for me was winning the World team event in Malaysia where I'd traveled further than ever before with the rest of the team Jenny Duncalf at 1, me at 2, Alison Waters at 3 and Tina Rix at 4 and Sarah Kippax as reserve. We were a strong team but we were seeded to play Malaysia in front of their home crowd thought to be about a 1000, mainly because of the ever growing popularity and success of Nicol David the number 1 Malaysian player. It turned out to be thrilling and Alison went on first to give us a 3-0 victory at 3 to go 1-0 up. Jenny then lost to the strong Nicol at 2 and so I went on at 1-1 for the decider against Tricia Chuah. I was extremely nervous and this showed I went 2-0 down and it was almost over at 7-2 down in the 3rd before I found my form again and I won the 3rd and never looked back. I won the match 3-2 and England won as a result of mine and Alison's win 2-1. It was one of the most exciting moments of my junior career and something I will never forget.
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Top row, left to right: Laura, Jenny Duncalf, Sarah Kippax. Bottom row is Annette Pilling (Coach), David Campion (caoch), Jahangir Khan, Alison Waters and Tina Rix. |
Pictured left is the full squad on the podium.From this I finished college and it made my mind up for me that I wanted to play professionally, so after completing my 'A' levels I turned full time. This was a shock to the system training was stepped up from training 5-6 times a week to training twice a day 6 days a week but after settling in I've never looked back. As you can see on the personal profile and statistics neither has my ranking!!!!!