Register today for the first provincial championship event of the 2024/2025 squash season: The 2024 Heidelberg Materials Ontario Championships. This event will kick us off with competitions for men and women in Open, A, B, C, D, and E divisions, as well as doubles events in the accompanying Harvest Hit tournament.
With thanks to our supporting partners - Heidelberg Materials and the Pickering Squash Club - players will enjoy a quality tournament top, Friday night pizza, Saturday Lunch, and $4,000 in prize money for the Open disivions.
Tournament Chair Nicole Pirko and the Pickering Squash Club team of volunteers are excited to welcome everyone back from the off-season and connect once more with our squash family!
Women's Social & Seminar Supported by Heidelberg Materials: We are overjoyed to have received the support of Heidelberg Materials to enhance the women's side of this event, furthering our goals to increase women's participation across all squash tournaments in Ontario. Late Saturday afternoon (timing to be determined), we welcome all female participants to join us for a "Competing in Squash" seminar and social hosted by Marci Sier with some extra treats provided. All efforts will be made to schedule matches around this seminar, which will culminate with feature Open matches to watch! Stay tuned for more details.
A note about women’s participation:
Across all sports, 2.18 males to every 1 female is the average gender participation ratio. Pre-pandemic, squash outperformed the average at 1.9 males to every 1 female. Sadly, that gender gap has increased to 2.12 in 2022-2023 and 2.50 in 2023-2024. Specifically, junior Grand Prix and junior Silver gender gaps are closing, while all others are increasing with the largest gender gap increase being senior provincials. Our goal is to reverse this trend this year and we hope you will all support us in this effort.