Our wonderfully diverse neighborhood in St Paul
Kinsey and I are just now launching the Squash Collective classes, but the groundwork was started last year when I moved to St Paul from NYC with the intention of founding a squash startup. I’d just left my role as executive director at the nonprofit Open Squash, and had some ideas for a new type of squash organization that focused on beginner players and access for everyone by eliminating financial barriers.
And immediately there was a huge problem: a squash startup needs squash courts! Not wanting to wait 12-18 months to build a new facility, I went looking for partners, and as usual the universe provided: we found kindred squash spirits in John and Amy O’Brien, the owners of the Commodore Squash Club in the Summit-University neighborhood in St Paul.
The amazing thing is that Squash Collective had stumbled into a partnership with the ideal club. The Commodore Squash Club has been the very epicenter of squash in the Midwest for the last 50 years, hosting major professional tournaments and a vibrant community of players. The walls are filled with photos and tournament draws sheets of squash greats going back to the mid-70’s, and John and Amy share the Squash Collective ethos: they understand beginner players, and they have always supported access to the sport, for years hosting fundraisers for a local squash nonprofit for children.
So the Commodore Squash Club has been a mainstay of the Summit-University neighborhood for decades, and this is the other reason they are perfect partners for us - the neighborhood itself is a microcosm of the community we want to build with Squash Collective. Why? Because it’s one of the most culturally and economically diverse neighborhoods in the Midwest. It’s got working class, public housing, and Summit Avenue mansions. It has generational white and black middle class, southeast Asian and Hmong diaspora communities, more recent East African & Latin American immigrant communities, and a deeply historical Black community from the Rondo legacy. And the local shops, businesses, and schools that reflect all of this.
So it’s just wonderful to stroll around the Summit-University neighborhood. There is a deep sense of history, but it also feels like the future. And one of our goals with Squash Collective is to gather all this onto the same court, where everyone from every background is focused on the sheer exhilaration of chasing a little black ball.