Shropshire Squash Club - December Update

Good Morning [[firstname]],

I will start by wishing everyone a slightly belated Merry Christmas, and all the very best for the New Year! I hope that everyone has had a good Christmas and looking forward to running off the Christmas excess on the court.

Charity Event – Sunday 28th December

Just to take this opportunity to remind you of our annual Severn Hospice charity event that will be taking place tomorrow, Sunday 28th December. Max has sent out messages and put up flyers to remind everyone. It is a great opportunity for our members, and squash & racketball players from around the county to get together, mix in on court, have a bit of a social after the Christmas break, and raise some money for a very worthwhile charity.

If you are not able to make it, there is a link below to a Just Giving page for

There will be a charity raffle at the event taking place around 6pm. If you have any unwanted Christmas gifts, or anything that you would like to donate, please bring them down.

We know that some people cannot attend the event but may want to contribute a donation. This can be done using the link below. You can include gift aid as well to boost your donation further.

https://www.justgiving.com/page/sscsevernhospicesocial?newPage=true

January 6th – The Squash Ashes

The Squash Ashes is being held at the Rugby Club on the 6th January. This will be an 18 vs 18 event pitching club against club. This is open to players of all abilities and if you are interested in playing, please contact Max Ball directly. It is a great opportunity for a fun, sociable evening of squash.

January Guest Fee FREE

We are excited to announce that Guest Fees will be waived for the month of January. We would like to encourage all members to bring a guest to try Racketball or Squash and would particularly like to try to increase our female membership at the club.

You will still need to add a guest to your booking in the usual way, but it would be great to see us taking real advantage of this to try and get new members through the door.

Have a think about who you might be able to encourage to get on court with you! We know at least one person…friend, colleague, family member. And when there take time to have a drink and make the most of the facilities.

New Kit has arrived

Great to see the new kit appearing around the club, and think that it looks brilliant. Please remember that there is a £10 subsidy available if you have not already taken advantage of it towards your first purchase. So if you do buy something online, please get in touch so that we can organise this with you.

AGM

Our annual AGM was held at the end of November. Membership attendance was pretty poor, but I do appreciate the members who attended, and felt that the meeting overall was constructive. I have attached minutes from the meeting, but to highlight a few of the main points raised;

Heating – this took centre stage and there is an action for the committee to make some proposals for potential upgrades to court heating to understand the cost options and what implications there would be for the club / school and how this project can be funded. We would like to put a small subcommittee together for this project. If you would like to get involved helping to contact contractors, potentially meet up on site, and put together proposals please get in touch with me directly.

Play & Stay – this is not something new, but something that we need to increase focus on, and you will see in communications more and more. In short, we want to encourage members to stay for a drink after playing. Not only is (or was) this accepted as basic playing etiquette, it is a way of supporting the club, and getting to know other members.

Padel Courts – the school are building Padel Courts that should be up and running from around Easter. The committee are speaking to the school about access to the court. They are not going to be general access, pay & play, but the initial idea is for there to be a nominal additional membership fee to grant access to a court booking which will attract an additional fee. Quite an exciting prospect.

Play & Stay

As mentioned above, we would really like to push Playing & Staying to make use of the bar. We would be interested to understand what the drivers or blockages are to people staying? Do the two codes to the kitchen and then bar area put people off? Is having to open the bar up off putting – assuming that you know that codes? To confirm, the key box code to access the key to open the outer door is 2525. The keypad code to get into the bar itself is 4723.

We would interested to hear any comments, concerns, suggestions that people might have regarding this or any of the points raised above.

Enjoy the rest of the festive period, eat, drink and be merry knowing that you can burn the calories on court in the new year ??

All the very best

Philip Caudle

For and on behalf of the Committee