Sydney Soloway founded SquashCares, in September 2014, inspired by an article she read about a ball-blanket program in Finland. She has two significantly developmentally disabled first cousins who struggle with hyperactivity and has seen first-hand the benefit of weighted ball blankets for autistic and ADHD individuals. She came to the conclusion she wanted to make her own ball blankets to help people with disabilities, and, because there are no squash ball recycling programs in the United States, to keep dead balls out of landfills.
The SquashCares equipment collection program was inspired when she noticed how often she and other members of the squash community bought new squash sneakers or racquets when new items were released, but their current gear still retained its useful life. SquashCares donates used squash gear collected from the squash community.
Sydney graduated from the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts and attends Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. She is an avid squash player and played number one on the Dana Hall varsity team. Sydney represented the United States on the junior girls’ squash team at the 20th Maccabiah Games in Israel, winning a gold medal in the team competition. and was a US Squash Scholar Athlete throughout high school.
Others involved in SquashCares have included:
Professional Squash Ambassador, Olivia Blatchford
College Ambassador, Sophie Langlois
Boston Ambassador, Charlotte Bell
New York Equipment Collection Coordinator, Caroline Arena
New Hampshire Ball Collection Coordinator, Hope Silva
Pennsylvania Ball Collection Coordinator, Emily Bartos
Rhode Island Ball/Equipment Collection Coordinator, Barrett Gallo
- Sewing 36 more blankets this year and giving them away to individuals and organizations servicing people with ADHD and autism;
- Engaging over 200 volunteers at five sewing events;
- Extending the reach of SquashCares outside the Boston area to Providence, Groton, Framingham State and South Africa;
- Collecting over 6,900 dead squash balls for recycling from over 25 clubs, schools and college teams;
- Holding our second College Collection Contest (special shout out to Hamilton College for winning the competition for the second year in a row!); and
- Collecting 180 pieces of squash equipment for 4 urban squash programs;
- Thanks to these great clubs and schools who hosted collection bins for SquashCares this year – Dana Hall School, The Maugus Club, Hamilton College, St. Paul’s School, Cross Courts Squash, Williams College, Harvard University, The Hopkins School, Pomfret School, and Newton Squash and Tennis.
- Kudos to our Ambassador Charlotte Bell for collecting almost 400 balls from tournaments and squash camps this past summer and to Barrett Gallo for spearheading collection of over 1,000 balls in Rhode Island!
- College Collection Contest: 2017-2018
- And for the second year in a row, the winner is….. HAMILTON COLLEGE!!!!! Winning again by a landslide, with a total of 400 collected dead squash balls. We would like to extend our gratitude to Coach King and his squash program.
- As a prize Hamilton has selected Squash Haven to receive 3 dozen balls from Dunlop. In selecting Squash Haven, Coach King noted that the donation was in honor of Rafiatou Ouro-Aguy ’18 who will be graduating in May from Hamilton, and was part of the first class of Squash Haven students to matriculate to college. In addition, the donation was in honor of John DeWitt ’09 who was the squash director/head coach at Squash Haven while Rafi was in the program and also played #1 on the Hamilton Men’s Squash Team.
- Sewing 23 more blankets this year and giving them away to individuals and 7 organizations servicing people with ADHD and autism;
- Engaging over 100 volunteers at two sewing events (at the third annual sewing event at Dana Hall and our first event at SquashBusters);
- Collecting over 5,500 dead squash balls for recycling from over 25 clubs, schools and college teams;
- Holding our first College Collection Contest where 14 college squash programs contributed balls to SquashCares (special shout out to Hamilton College for winning the competition!);
- Holding 8 collection events at all three venues for the US Junior Open, all three venues for the NEISA Girls championships and the CSA Men’s and Women’s College Championships;
- Collecting 100 pieces of squash equipment for 3 urban squash programs;
- Establishing our college ball blanket sewing program with Framingham State University; and
- Setting the stage for next year’s expansion into Philadelphia and Providence by engaging with the community service organizations from Drexel University and Rhode Island School for Design.
College Collection Contest
This year we held our first college collection contest! Dunlop provided three dozen new balls to the school contributing the most dead balls to SquashCares. The College Squash Association endorsed this event.
At the College National Championships we collected 2,287 balls from 13 colleges. Thanks to Connecticut College, Navy, Colby, Dartmouth, George Washington, Brown, Bates, Vassar, Hamilton, Bowdoin, Harvard, Princeton and Cornell for participating in our program!
And the Winner is …. Hamilton College with over 500 balls donated! Thanks to Coach King and all his players for supporting SquashCares.
US Junior Open Squash Championships
SquashCares in conjunction with US Squash held a ball and equipment collection event at the US Junior Open from December 17 through 20. We hosted collection bins at Yale, Trinity, Wesleyan and Choate. Thanks to Sarah Willwerth, Ellie Ackerman and Ben Gliklich for supervising bins at three of the locations.
While our collection was not as large as we hoped, we did collect 3 racquets and 11 pairs of shoes. We also passed out SquashCares flyers and spread the word about our efforts across the world. Thanks to all those who contributed and who showed an interest in our project.
- Two fantastic ball blanket sewing events and one prep event resulting in 14 blankets given away to individuals and 7 organizations.
- New records for contributions of balls (nearly 2,600), shoes (47) and squash racquets (37).
- In October 2015, Sydney delivered the introductory speech for the US SQUASH Open Character in Sports Day award ceremony today at Drexel University. You can see the speech here.
- The PSA ReBound program pledged its support to SquashCares.
- Sophie Langlois joined SquashCares as the Director of Sewing and immediately impacted our sewing events by making them run more efficiently;
- SquashCares incorporated as a non-profit corporation.
- Sydney’s work for SquashCares received a Certificate of Excellence for the Prudential Spirit of Community Award.
- SquashCares received grants from US Squash and a YSA 2015 Summer of Creativity grant.
- We ran our first Generosity crowd funding campaign and raised around $1,000 for our sewing events.
- We received generous contributions from Polartec, the Professional Squash Association World Tour and Dunlop Sports.
Ball Collection
During 2014-2015 our aim was to collect 1,100 squash balls to sew into ball blankets. By the conclusion of our sewing event on Global Youth Services Day, we had collected 1,700 balls. We used these balls to sew into eight ball blankets for kids with ADHD and autism.
Special thanks to the following major contributors: The New York Athletic Club and Clinton Leeuw (278 balls), Milton Academy (91 balls), Boston Sports Club in Allston, MA and Dave Renninger (93 balls), the Maugus Club (over 100 balls), Newton Squash & Tennis Club and Coach Chris Brownell (119 balls), TOG Squash Academy (over 70 balls), Hopkins School (60 balls), Deerfield Academy (39 balls), Belmont Hill School (48 balls), Wellesley College and Coach Wendy Berry (55 balls), Rhode Island Country Club (163 balls), Union Boat Club (63 balls), Pomfret School (60 balls).
Racquets and Shoes
Our racquet program produced 20 used racquets which were donated to two urban squash programs – CitySquash and Squash Haven. Our shoe program resulted in the contribution of 25 pairs of squash shoes to two urban squash programs – Squash Haven and SquashBusters.