Squash stars visit Latvia to promote the love of the game amongst youngsters – Squash News
Latvia’s Baltic capital city, Riga, gave a thunderous welcome to the squash leading icons Nicol David and John White who were there at the inaugural ceremony of WSF Ambassador Programme. David has been leading the world ranking
charts since 2006 and White is the former world number one from Scotland; so, it was an honour for such event organizers to have such celebrities onboard with them at the opening ceremony of their program.
Other celebrities that accompanied the two superstars included the head coach of Belgian and Dutch national squash teams, Ronny Vlasseks, and a former WSF top referee, Ian Allanach. Vlasseks provided some tips about squash to the
audience and Allanach joined in the show by explaining some of his masterful refereeing skills.
It was overall a very good morale booster for the youngsters of Latvia that have been deprived of such esteemed celebrity presence amongst them. WSF CEO, Andrew Shelley, was also present at the ceremony and explained to the attendants
about the plans of the program. He proclaimed “It’s the first of a series of promotional visits to young squash countries – in our bid to ‘reach out’.” The press conference was conducted at Zelta Bowling and Squash Centre by the Latvian Squash Federation to
apprise the people about the advancement of program and its prospects.
Vlasseks was questioned about the initial requirement for Latvian Squash and he honestly proclaimed that there is a definite need of thorough coaching structure from top to bottom so that youngsters that want to nurture their squash
skills can start doing that from root level at a very young age. This will definitely help in growing squash in Latvia and soon we will some big names in squash from this part of the world.
David also placed emphasis on preaching squash at root levels and explained one of her memorable moments of childhood in the these words “I will never forget walking into the stadium during the opening ceremony of the 1998 Commonwealth
Games in KL, representing my country for the first time aged 14, with everyone cheering for you – it was such a thrill.”
LSF has established a website and introduced the ranking procedures that will analyse the performances of each play in senior and junior tournaments and then rank them according to their performances.
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