Finding a way…

 

I learnt a lot during the year of 2006, the thing that stood out to me at the time was that squash was not going to go away, it was a big part of who I am. All I wanted was to get better, I dreamt of being the best I could be, not number 1 because that was never realistic. Understanding that there is always going to be someone better than you is hard to accept, but it also opens up your mind to what do you actually want. Six years ago I came up with an idea - I wanted to be the player that no one else wanted to play, when they looked at their draw they would think to themselves 'shittttt I have to play Harry'. Unfortunately this wasn't exactly the case with my skill level… Yes I had improved a lot in a year having travelled to a number of tournaments and trained with a great group, but there was still the element of experience that I was lacking. 

 

I guess in some way my idea of no one wanting to playing was coming to, in a certain way. My tuesday night and thursday night fixture teams were doing well, in my thursday night team I held a firm position at number 1, in the top level of the Southside in Brisbane. I knew that a lot of the older players at this competition hated playing me because I was running around more then they could and  getting everything back they would throw at me. Unfortunately my error rate was through the roof so all they really had to do was keep making me run and I would self destruct eventually.  

 

In 2007 my coach Marc Forster gained the lease over a 3 court squash centre on Griffith University Nathan Campus. This mad things tricky as I now couldn't quite afford all the coaching I wanted from Marc. But where there is a will there is a way. My life has and still does pretty much revolved around that saying, everything I ever wanted has happened through unconventional courses of action. I proposed to Marc that I work 2 -3 evenings a week and he would work out a training regime and organise coaching time - basically I was bartering work for coaching and this my friends is my little secret of how I have lived in Europe for the past 18 months. 

 

I can not remember if this was currently my second or third job at the time but it was definitely the easiest and the most fun. Every Wednesday night I would have a group of 4 school friends show up, Ben Watt, Simon Andrews, Rohan O'Driscoll and Yen Ting Chou. Now normal people would play a round robyn or just game after game after game... not us. We would play 10 down suicide rules. Basically this consisted of all 5 of us being on the court, starting with 10 points, these point would decrease with every mistake or error one of us made. If you happen to hit zero then normally you have to lay on the floor or leave the court… However, we changed this rule to you have to go and lie down inf ront of the tin on the front wall, which would make things ummmm interesting to say the least. 

 

Three out of my four friends played squash for sport in high school, so they were competent in hitting the ball. But hitting the ball while avoiding the other 4 people on court is a completely different story. Lets just say with out a doubt some one got hit each week and on the odd occasion blood was drawn from someones face and every other time Rohan would be on the floor grabbing his testicles in pain, asking God why??? Whilst these sounds like a brutal game it was some of the most fun I have ever had on a squash court, it was a way of forgetting everything just mucking around with a bunch of mates while trying to avoid injury whilst simultaneously inflicting it on others. 

 

 

I was training hard, working hard and occasionally ‘playing’. I would go out once a week to hang with friends, but mostly I loved to play 10 down with my school friends… it just made everything disappear. We were all crying from laughter for an hour and a half every Wednesday night and it was fantastic. But now back to the point - I wanted more everything! To get better, for that I needed more coaching and with that came more work. When the opportunity arose I had to take it or else what I wanted would not happen. So what if I was working two or three jobs living off 5 hours sleep or less, if you want something you will find a way to get it and nothing else really matters.

 

 

 

On a side note, turns out all this hard work over the years is starting to show some results. 
On the 15th of December 2013 I won the Greek National Championship and Offically became the new number 1 in Greece...Pretty happy right now