A Look Back January 2019

[Above] Twenty Years Ago in Squash Magazine         January 1999
Mark Lewis, portrayed by Randall Scott, reached the finals of the 1998 National Singles. He worked as the head pro at the Union Boat Club from 1997 until 2003, played on the PSA tour, topping out at world No. 106 and was USOC Athlete of the Year in 1998. He also coached Team USA’s junior teams at world championships in Italy and India and served on the board of US Squash from 1997 to 2003. He then moved to Washington, DC to serve as the executive director of DC Squash Academy, the local urban program. For six years he coached at Potomac School, as well as two years at Georgetown. In the summer of 2015 Lewis was appointed the head men’s and women’s coach at Middlebury. Both the Panther’s men’s and women’s teams, playing out of their light-filled nine-court facility, have finished the season ranked as high as fifteenth under Lewis, and three times he’s been honored as NESCAC Coach of the Year.

 

Fifteen Years Ago in Squash Magazine          February 2004
Steve Line snapped the photo of Carol Owens at the 2003 World Open in Hong Kong. Owens did what other pros dream of:  at the pinnacle of her career, she won the world championship, secured a world No. 1 ranking and then retired. She immediately took up coaching, teaching at Harcourts Eden Epson in Auckland, New Zealand and producing twenty-three national champions. She also worked as a sales rep for Head from 2003-2010 and for the next seven years as a sales rep in the aquatic industry. In 2017 she started doing part-time work in the real estate market and running an Airbnb out of her Auckland home. She has a Cairn terrier and toy poodle mix named Milo.

 

 

 

 

Ten Years Ago in Squash Magazine   January 2009
It was one of the most famous finals in the history of the World Team Championships: in 2008 in Cairo, Engy Kheirallah saved a match ball in the fifth game of the deciding match before converting her own match ball in the tiebreaker to clinch Egypt’s first-ever women’s world team title. Kheirallah went on to notch one more PSA title and reached world No. 11. Long married to Karim Darwish, Kheirallah retired in the summer of 2011 after finding out she was pregnant with their first child, Omar. They then had twin girls, Hana and Farida, in October 2015. Kheirallah has helped Darwish at Wadi Degla Sporting Club where he directs a squash academy, and in particular she assisted in organizing the 2014 World Open at the club.

 

 

 

 

Five Years Ago in Squash Magazine   December 2013
Amr Khaled Khalifa, the St. Lawrence sophomore, made the cover for winning the 2013 National Intercollegiate Individuals earlier in the year, where he topped the previous two champions en route to the title. Khalifa graduated from St. Lawrence in 2016, having gone 46-5 for the Saints and earning the Skillman Award for sportsmanship. After graduation, he worked for the Carlyle Group in New York and then in March 2018 moved back to his hometown of Cairo to work at a large private equity firm. Khalifa moonlights as the camps and events manager at Black Ball Sporting Club, a new Cairo club with sixteen courts that just hosted a major PSA event last month.  He also just launched a fashion design start-up called Khalifa Brothers.