Sport England
Sport England – www.sportengland.org
Squash is currently placed as an English Priority Sport. This means that as we are not included in the Olympics and compete as England rather than GB, we work with Sport England in a slightly different way.
The involvement means that players from a young age through to seniors receive lottery funding to help train and play to a high level without taking on another job. This setup is called the World Class Performance Programme.
I am one of the players involved in this programme and as a result it means from juniors I was able to train full time and use a number of benefits. This has played a massive role in the way my ranking has moved upwards and the amount of training I have been able to do since turning professional.
These benefits are huge. For example, as a result of the 2002 Manchester commonwealth games we now have a 7 court National Centre and the North-West Regional Headquarters of the English Institute of Sport (EIS).