If you’ve never competed on a junior squash team, now is your chance.
You’ll likely find team squash is fun and a great experience. If you hope to play in college someday, this will give you a taste of playing on a team.
Now is a great time to assemble a team. The National Capital Squash (NCS) Board sponsors high school teams to compete in the US Squash National Interscholastic Team Squash Championships.
This event is open only to teams with students who attend a school without a squash team.
Teams that combine players from two or more schools in the NCS district may receive the sponsorship. Seven players play each match, so most teams use a roster of eight players. Teams are placed in divisions and seeded by skill level, so teams get competitive matches.
The Team Championships are the weekend of January 24 at the Specter Center in Philadelphia, and the tournament … Continue Reading ››
National Capital Squash (NCS) is pleased to announce a sponsorship program to encourage high school varsity or club teams to participate in the US SQUASH National High School Championships.
The High School Championships offers divisions for teams at all skill levels. Even if your team has never played in a team tournament, you will be placed in a division that should provide good competition.
There are up to two sponsorship for up to two teams. Each sponsorship would be for up to $1650 to pay for entry fees and a portion of other expenses.
Here are the eligibility requirements:
The school has not sent any team to any prior US SQUASH High School Championship.
The team must have played team matches recorded in the US SQUASH database against other teams (ideally, at least four such matches prior to the seeding of the High School Championship).
US Squash selects the nation’s top juniors to represent the USA in international competition each summer. Incredibly, six local juniors were offered spots, a record for our area.
Nathan Rosenzwieg was selected to compete in the World Junior Championships, the first time an NCS junior competed in this event since 2010. Nathan is now a first-year player at the University of Virginia, which finished last season with a #8 national ranking.
Elise Kang competed in the Pan Am Junior Championships and scored a Bronze Medal for Team USA.
Three girls represented our nation at the Egyptian Junior Open, considered the third-hardest tournament in the world. Despite being seeded 17/32 in the 32-player GU17 draw, Akaisha Bhatia pulled off two massive upsets in the first two rounds, both by 3-0 wins. First, she beat a 9/16 seeded Egyptian, and then she knocked out the #2 seed, a German, to reach the quarters. Calla Yim took … Continue Reading ››
The 2024 World Masters made history with the largest participation in tournament history as 1,070 masters players from around the world competed in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
NCS’s Carole Grunberg was among three Americans who medaled in the event. She earned a spot in the 70+ 1-8 playoff by winning all three of her group matches. Grunberg reached the semifinals with a 3-0 victory, before losing out in the semifinals against Australia’s two seed Gaye Mitchell 12-10, 10-12, 11-4, 11-7. Grunberg then clinched the bronze medal in the 3/4 playoff against Scotland’s Maureen Carroll 11-6, 11-5, 11-6.
Congratulations Carole!
NCS players Sergio Lopez, Deepak Gopinath, Tawhid Nawaz, Asif Ehsan and Ross Campbell also competed for Team USA. The next world masters will be in Brisbane Australia in August, 2026.
Trinity Moshi won the GU15 draw at the 64-draw Dutch Junior Open. Leading up to the final, she won all her matches in three games, then prevailed in a five-game thriller over the top Dutch player.
Akaisha Bhatia scored the best finish among NCS juniors at the season’s first Junior Championship Tournament (JCT), in Connecticut in August, by reaching the GU17 semis. Akaisha also won the Virginia Gold in GU19 earlier this summer. Playing in an older age division, Isabella Tang took 9th place in GU19 at the JCT and Rohan Gondi, who also won the Racquet Up Detroit Summer Junior Gold, placed 6th in BU19. Zack Ingber took 9th in BU15.
Trinity Moshi won the GU17 draw at the Southeast Regional Junior Gold, and Christian Keng won BU17. Sami Garside, Zack Ingber, and Kian Patnaik finished third in BU19, BU17, and BU15, respectively. Several NCS juniors notched personal bests there, including … Continue Reading ››
The annual Jeremy Barnes Memorial Tournament honors one of our favorite players who brought joy, humor, and a great passion for the game of squash. In a typical Jeremy Barnes match, there were at least three dives for shots out of his reach (and sometimes in his reach). He played in many local and national junior and adult tournaments and was a five-time NCS junior award winner. He then went on to make the varsity team at Drexel University, one of the top teams in collegiate squash.
Be sure to put this tournament on your entry list for next September. It's played at the Chevy Chase Athletic Club on the weekend closest to his September 15 birthday, so the next one will be September 12-14, 2025.
Over 50 players competed in this year’s tournament. In the top draw, 6.0, after coming back to defeat Zack Ingber in a five-game semifinal, Sergio Lopez … Continue Reading ››
The NCS inter-club league recently completed its spring/summer season. Eight teams from DC, Maryland and Virginia competed in a division for players ranked up to 5.0, while six teams participated in the 4.0 grouping. More than 135 players participated in more than 100 matches during the season.
The B team from perennial contender Regency (McLean OneLife) took the title in the 5.0 division, winning in the final over its intra-club rival Regency A.
Bethesda won the 4.0 championship for the first time since 2019.
After a short break, the fall/winter season will kick off in October and run through March 2025. We are speaking with some clubs interested in rejoining both existing divisions, and are exploring adding a pilot division with a few teams to start for players with rankings up to 3.0 to get newer players involved in competitive matches.
The U.S. Junior Squash Championships is the top USA Junior tournament, and it’s open only to the leading 32 US citizens in each age group. Merely being selected for this tournament is one of the highest honors possible for a junior squash player.
Congratulations to all 17 NCS juniors who gained entry to this prestigious event!
This is one of the largest, if not the largest, number of NCS juniors who have qualified for the tournament.
Listed below are those who have gained entry to the tournament and their current position on the cut list. The final seeding of the tournament is randomized after the top four positions.
GU15
Isabella Tang, 3
Trinity Moshi, 6
Shreya Vadlamani, 29
GU17
Calla S Yim, 8
Akaisha Bhatia, 11
Makeda Moshi, 16
Caroline Burg, 27
Khadija Elhaddad, 30
GU19
Elise Kang, 11
Indira Moshi, 25
BU13
Eric Tang, 9
BU15
Zachary Ingber, 14
Kian Patnaik, 27
BU17
Christian Keng, 29
BU19
Nathan Rosenzweig, 6
Daniel King, 16
Lucas Bitar, 32
