Melina Turk is a squash professional at the Bermuda Squash Rackets Association, where her and interviewee, James Green met, at the 2025 edition of the Bermuda Squash Challenge, where teams from New York travel to Bermuda to play in a social squash tournament.
Melina grew up playing squash, and played College Squash at Dartmouth, solidly at the #2 position, and then decided to play professionally, which she described as “a lot of grind.” She had to coach to support her professional career, working initially in Westchester and then moving back to Canada and coaching in Calgary to be closer to her family in Winnipeg. Turk made it as high as #88 in the world, but eventually decided to stop her professional career, mainly due to financial reasons and the strain of playing and coaching full time.
Turk has stayed in the squash world, however, and it's unsurprising given her family’s connection to the sport. Her father was the Canadian National Coach and a professional player, and one of the best players in Canada. Her brother, Connor, is currently on the PSA World Tour and a member of Team Canada. Their father has been retired from Squash Canada Coaching for the past 10 years, but it is fair to say that Turk’s introduction to squash has been heavily influenced by her family.
Turk now uses her squash skills on the operations side, having run squash clubs in Toronto, Yellow Knife, and now Bermuda. In Yellow Knife, one of the North West territories in Canada, with the largest town having 20,000 people, Turk worked in a “super social” club with four courts and a vibrant squash community, with around 1,500 members! “It was pretty much the place to go for exercise in Yellow Knife,” said Turk.
Turk eventually left Yellow Knife because of an offer to move to Bermuda, an offer she describes as too good to turn down, especially thanks to the tropical climate, contrasting to the freezing temperatures in Canada! In the last few years she has been there, Turk has made quite the mark on the squash scene, in 2024 she won the Bermuda Squash Championships!
Turk was approached by Green via email for the revival of the Bermuda Squash Challenge, a tournament that had been stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and had not yet revived. Turk was the perfect person to run the tournament, saying that it ticked all her boxes for the type of tournament she likes to run.
“The criteria is a heavy social aspect involved…almost to the point where squash is secondary.” Turk laughed with Green.
The Bermuda Squash Challenge is a team tournament made of teams with 3 players, an A, B and C player and teams from Bermuda compete against teams from other overseas teams, multiple teams coming from New York, mainly Open Squash. As for the social aspect- there was a banquet dinner with drinks, catered food at the club, a barbeque night with local beers and a fun one-point lighting tournament where the winner of each point stays on court.
The winners of last year’s challenge included some big names such as Diego Elias, Leonel Cardenas and Nikki Todd… a little strong for most of the other teams! Green jokes that they didn't quite follow the rules, but nonetheless he loved getting on court with them.
If you are interested in playing this year’s tournament from May 28-31st, you can register your team here!