The experts in the evolution of squash, developing champion athletes and people

Almost every athlete in the world would like to feel that the sport they take part in is the greatest. They are certain that they are succeeding at the most challenging athletic event, so it is no surprise that every squash player, too, believes the same. Squash is a hard sport to play. It is fast-moving and highly competitive. Professional squash players are trained to move around the court easily without feeling tired because being conditioned physically is an integral part of the game. In a mere 45-minute game, the player will have mimicked the hardest aerobic and cardio workout a person can do.

Globally, there are various firms delivering excellent services for people interested in the game of squash, but MSQUASH stands out from the rest. MSQUASH is a specialized one-stop-shop Squash Institute, covering every stage of a squash athlete’s development—starting at age four and going all the way into Masters Squash, with a new important focus on professional squash. Msquash offers their athletes a wide range of innovative training elements supported by disruptive tech partners, along with some of the best coaches in the world, all of whom creatively use this combination of technology and training to elevate the game of squash. The company’s services go from squash training to tournament coaching, physical therapy, strength and conditioning, college recruiting, and mindset training.

In conversation with Shaun Moxham and Katline Cauwels Co-Founders of MSQUASH

Q. From your perspective, how is the industry you serve currently evolving? And what are the trends in the different categories?

The U.S. has the fastest-growing squash participation worldwide. The connection between squash and college is an important one for the growth of the sport. Squash ranks the 12th fastest growing sport in the USA over the last three years with a 32.6% increase in participation and currently counts up to 1.71 million squash players. Squash is also considered very healthy: A Forbes study pronounced squash the #1 sport for getting and staying fit – average players burn about 750 calories per hour! You can play it any day of the year and get a quick return on effort in 45 to 60min. Understanding these facts, you see the sport is growing here, and the US is the most advanced in combining the development of the sport at a young age - with the pursuit of college squash in mind for many. At MSquash, we align our efforts with these trends: we specialize in guiding athletes from 4 to 25 years old, and we innovate in the way we train our players with the latest technology as well as putting a major focus on the wellbeing of the athlete from a very very young age. That way, when things can become more stressful, our athletes are prepared for the stress.

Q. How do interactiveSQUASH courts and an advanced video analysis court benefit kid athletes transform their game?

MSQUASH is all about measuring and visualizing progress. Any technology we use is being used to measure performance, provide objective and visual feedback and manage and visualize progress for the athletes. On the video analysis, we compare the ‘old’ swing movement to the new swing movement of an athlete; on the interactiveSQUASH courts, we follow-up progress, for instance, by tracking the precision of an athlete’s shots and how many they can hit in a minute.

Q. What can you tell us about MSQUASH’s girl wing?

Katline: It is one of my favorite wings of the program. It’s about bringing the top players - Junior numbers #1 in the country together with girls who may just be at the start of their career and teaching them the lesson that they can just do that. In every girl, there is a future champion. In every girl, there lives a tiger, which is hungry for success. It is just a matter of how you get the tiger out. I do it by forming a big group of girls of all lessons and treating them all equally. I teach them to live and work “hard and with their heart.” Be tough and care at the same time. That will get you the farthest. Our girl’s clinics are successful and lead to international camps once a year to Europe in the summer.

Q. Where does MSQUASH stand at the moment? And what does it strive to achieve next?

We have recently opened our 2nd campus; together, the two campuses form one Squash Institute. Players from all over the world travel to come and train with us. We work hard on training our team of coaches and professionals to grow the knowledge and work hard to open more campuses in the near future successfully, all sharing the same values, passion, and methodology.

Q. No doubt MSQUASH is charting new territories in this segment. Given how frequently circumstances change, what plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?

We continue to scan the market and try to understand the newest developments. We are the first club globally with a glass squash court floor with LED lighting underneath the floor. We are the first club in the world with three interactive squash courts; we are the first club in the world with a D-wall Movement Studio. We are the first movers. This trend originates from the desire as a coach to get a message across and to come up with new ways that work even better. The world changes using technology for almost everything, and so we will continue adopting the technology of everyday life and bring it into our training.

Meet the leaders behind the success of MSQUASH

Co-founder, Shaun Moxham grew up in Brisbane, Australia and played professionally. He earned the #3 rank in the World Junior Championships in 1988. He propelled to the Top 50 world ranked players and became the youngest coach ever to produce a world champion, David Palmer. Together they won 2 World Championships and 4 British Open Titles. That success led Shaun to create his own academy in 1998, then in Belgium, called MSquash. Together with his family and wife Katline Cauwels, he moved in 2014 to the US with the ambition to start a High Performance Academy with the best global training methodology and technology. Players and coaches worldwide refer to Shaun as one of the best and most creative coaches and teachers of the game. Katline Cauwels, a Belgium national champion at age 15 and European Junior #1 at 18, got to a career high of 40 in the world while at college. Katline holds masters in Marketing and International Business Management and has been passionate about innovation and disruptive business models all her life.

“We turn the athlete model around. We use technology and build the mindset from the youngest stages of their development to get the message across differently.”