Our Team

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Founder, Sydney Soloway, is a senior at the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts and will attend Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. She is an avid squash player and has played number one on the Dana Hall varsity team for the past two years. She will continue her squash career at Hamilton. Sydney also plays on the Dana Hall varsity field hockey team. She is Co-Captain of both the varsity squash and field hockey teams and is Senior Class Co-President. This past summer, she 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. Sydney has been a US Squash Scholar Athlete each of the last two years.

She started SquashCares, a non-profit corporation, in September 2014 of her freshman year, and it was 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 rackets when new items were released, but their current gear still retained its useful life. Currently SquashCares donates used squash gear collected from the squash community to SquashBusters, CitySquash, Squash Haven, and the PSA ReBound program. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Sydney at sydney@squashcares.org.

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Professional Squash Ambassador, Olivia Blatchford has been a professional squash player since 2006. In 2007 she won the British Junior Open U-15 event. She has won five professional tournament titles. Olivia is currently ranked 12 in the world, and she is the 2nd highest ranked American woman to date. For SquashCares, Olivia helps spread the word about our programs and facilitates collection of balls and equipment at her home club, Chelsea Piers in Stamford, CT.

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College Ambassador, Sophie Langlois, is a freshman at Colby College. She is a recent graduate from the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She is also an avid squash player and co-captained the Dana Hall varsity team (2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons), holding the number three and four positions during the last two seasons.

Sophie was previously Director of Sewing for SquashCares. In that role she helped to create our ball blanket sewing tutorial, prepared blankets prior to sewing events, and offered a helping hand to sewing volunteers at our events. Now Sophie will take on the role of Ambassador spreading the word about SquashCares among colleges and coordinating ball and equipment collections at the college level. Along with dedicating hard work to SquashCares, she also runs her own fashion blog, Salut-Sophie.

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Boston Ambassador, Charlotte Bell is an 8th grader at The Meadowbrook School of Weston. Charlotte is a veteran tournament squash player and was ranked #1 nationally the U13 age group. Charlotte won the US Squash Most Improved Player award for the U15 age group at Nationals in 2017. As a member of Team USA, Charlotte has attended the British Open and Battle of the Border in Canada. Charlotte is co-captain and plays #1 for the Meadowbrook coed team.

Charlotte spreads the word about SquashCares at junior squash tournaments and helps to organize ball and equipment collections at tournaments.

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New York Equipment Collection Coordinator, Caroline Arena is a Junior at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  Caroline has played squash since she was 10 years old, competing in tournaments and as a member of Packer’s co-ed Varsity Squash Team. Caroline represented the United States this past summer while playing on the junior girls team (alongside Sydney) at the 20th Maccabiah Games in Israel. Caroline won a gold medal in the team competition and a silver medal in the individual competition. Caroline has also played in the Dutch and German Opens and has been a US Squash Scholar Athlete for the past two years.

As Equipment Collection Coordinator at SquashCares, Caroline is responsible for collecting gently used squash gear (for urban squash programs) and squash balls (for ball blankets).

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New Hampshire Ball Collection Coordinator, Hope Silva is a sophomore at St. Paul’s School, in Concord, New Hampshire. She has been playing squash since she was eleven years old and has been on a high school varsity team for the past two years. Hope recently competed in the 20th Maccabiah Games for Squash, winning a bronze medal in the team competition, representing a combined United States and Israel team. She is also a 2017 US Squash Scholar Athlete.

Hope is responsible for collecting squash balls at St. Paul’s for ball blanket production.

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Pennsylvania Ball Collection Coordinator, Emily Bartos is a senior at Lower Merion High School, in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Emily has been playing squash since she was 12 years old, competing in tournaments and as part of the HLM Varsity squash team in high school. Emily represented the United States this past summer while playing on the Junior Girls team at the Maccabiah Games. Emily won a team gold and an individual bronze in these games. She has also been a US Scholar Athlete for the past three years.

Emily collects balls at The Cynwyd Club in Cynwyd, Philadelphia. Her collection efforts will go towards the upcoming sewing event this winter with Drexel University and SquashSmarts.

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Rhode Island Ball/Equipment Collection Coordinator, Barrett Gallo is a 6th grader from Providence, Rhode Island. Barrett started playing squash when she was eight years old. She has been competing nationally for the last two years. Barrett is looking forward to combining her love of squash and sewing to help create more ball blankets. She will collect equipment and squash balls in the Providence area. The dead squash balls will be delivered to the Rhode Island School of Design for their winter sewing event.

We are looking for new leaders to join our team. If you are interested, please reach out to Sydney Soloway at sydney@squashcares.org.