Vera Galvez, a member of our Open Squash community, started playing squash later in life when her job at Maspeth Welding, a steel company, built an outdoor squash court!
When she started working at Maspeth Welding “there was no squash court, just a really down and dirty facility, really industrial.” Galvez was working at the company when Jeff Anschlowar, the owner and a squash fanatic, decided to build an outdoor squash court.
“It was a huge collaboration and the thoughts went around for months and there was a lot of experimenting, bouncing balls off walls and floors and steel and looking at dimensions, and I was there in the background working.” Explained Galvez.
The building of the court was a real process, she said, and at Maspeth they like to make sure everything is done as well as it can be. The pandemic paused operations briefly, and then accelerated them as there was no other work to be done.
In the Summer of 2020, when the court was finally completed, Galvez said that all of the local professional players started flocking to the court, delighted to finally have somewhere to play amid the pandemic. “At that point I didn’t even know the difference between a pro and an amateur,” she laughed.
Despite being intrigued at first by squash, she didn’t immediately jump on the court, until Maspeth Welding started offering lessons to employees, and she loved it from the get-go.
Fast forward to now, and Galvez is a huge squash fanatic herself, “playing a little bit everywhere.” She says that she made the jump when she realized she couldn’t get much better without playing more than once a week.
When it got colder outside, she decided to come to play at Open Squash with Coach Josh Easdon at “Mom’s Morning Madness” which appealed to her as it didn’t seem intimidating.
“I started at Open Squash and it opened up so many doors and introduced me to so many people in the community that it's kind of endless at this point.” Galvez reflected.
Galvez feels that the squash community, particularly the women’s, has helped her so much in improving her game. She says that there is so much support from all age ranges, abilities, and this has helped her grow her love for the game.
She also loves that you can find a squash court nearly anywhere you go, and almost doesn’t want to travel to places where there isn’t a court! She has transformed her love for the game into a growing trophy cabinet in her office from the multiple skill-level tournaments she has won!