Professional squash is a lonely sport. It’s played on indoor, compact courts at venues that can rarely generate a lively environment, so players are travelling around the world, participating in an unforgiven schedule, often scratching to break even, all without the juice of a roaring crowd.

“You’re playing for yourself a lot of the time,” says Spencer Lovejoy, a former pro who now lives in Center City. “It’s a solitary lifestyle.”

After graduating from Yale University in 2020, Lovejoy turned pro before ascending to a ranking of #64 in the world. He talks about his years on the Professional Squash Association tour as a dream come true, but they also took a toll; he retired at the age of 27. “It’s not like tennis, where you can afford a whole team around you — a coach, a physio, a trainer, your manager,” says Lovejoy. “You just can’t afford those kinds of resources unless you’re the very best in the world, maybe.”

Today, Lovejoy is busy cultivating a greater sense of camaraderie in the game, for players and fans alike. He is the recently appointed CEO of the National Squash League (NSL), a startup in its third year trying to recast squash as a team sport. The NSL features men’s and women’s divisions, with players getting paid according to their PSA tour ranking (the men and women are paid the same), along with a brand-new style of gameplay — adopting elements from better-known American sports to create a team-centric version of the game: homecourt advantages, a running clock, substitutions, and buzzer-beaters.

“Hockey is 10,000 times more profitable than squash. So, where did squash go wrong?” — Fernando Valdizan

While it’s not the first-ever attempt at a team squash league, the NSL is by far the most innovative — even if its rules changes are anathema to some fans of the game, who’d prefer to maintain its mystique of orthodoxy and exclusivity. ”This is not the same take on the same sport that’s always been,” says one of the league’s founders, Fernando Valdizan.

And the franchise within NSL with the most success at embracing its newfangled ways is the reigning champion: the Philadelphia Lightning, co-owned by local philanthropist Tracey Specter.

The NSL is not trying to unseat the international pro tour but, rather, perfect a “supplemental product,” according to Lovejoy. NSL events are scheduled in tandem with the tour calendar, allowing top players to compete in both. In this way, the NSL aims to increase the visibility of the sport and bring a fast-paced version of the game to new audiences, especially in advance of the 2028 Summer Olympics, when squash will make its gold-medal debut. “Hopefully, the squash community in the United States can benefit from this,” Lovejoy says.

Squash, which was originally popularized in English boarding schools, has been played in the United States since 1884 — about a decade before the invention of basketball and volleyball. Yet, the sport has failed to capture the public’s imagination in the way that, say, pickleball has. One big reason for that is the absence of community. The sport’s elitist reputation has hurt its numbers, but it’s more than that: You don’t stumble upon squash at the park. It’s rarely ever televised. To the extent that someone actually knows what squash is — don’t you mean racquetball? — the game lacks recognizable brands. However, according to various sources, more than 1 million adults and children play squash at least once every year, roughly double the number who play hockey.

“Hockey is 10,000 times more profitable than squash,” says Valdizan. “So, where did squash go wrong?”

If a new narrative was to ever take hold, a sports-crazed city like Philadelphia would seem to make for the perfect test case. Make it here, you’ll make it anywhere. And the NSL trophy sitting in Specter’s office is just the latest sign that squash might have real staying power.

“Our city is the undisputed squash capital of the United States,” says Specter. “The response from local fans has been electric.”

League of their own

Growing up in suburban Kentucky, Fernando Valdizan found solace on the sports field. “As a Hispanic kid in a very white area, it was sometimes tough to be a minority,” he says. “Sports were always a safe space for me, where I could find people who were like-minded.”

Even as a sports enthusiast, however, he’d never heard of squash until his mid-20s. While in law school and low on cash, Valdizan got a cheap membership to a sports club that had squash courts. Watching the game for the first time, he was initially put off by its idiosyncrasies, like needing to “warm up” the rubber ball (under the armpit is a popular method) before you can play. “I thought it was insanely dumb,” Valdizan said on a recent episode of the podcast In Squash. But by the second or third time, he added, “I fell in love with it.”

There was something unique about squash — the fluidity of movement, the strategy, the intimacy with your opponent — that drew him in. And the more Valdizan threw himself into the game, the more he had a nagging question: Why is there virtually no support for pro squash in the U.S.? After all, at the collegiate level, it’s a varsity sport with a devoted fanbase, so why the sudden dropoff?

College squash is a team competition. Nine players from each school get matched up one-on-one, with the cumulative scores determining the winner. You’re pulling for a community, a school, a brand. In contrast, the PSA Tour features players strictly competing as individuals. They bounce around from tournament to tournament, advancing through brackets one match at a time, and, if they’re lucky, winning enough prize money to cover the cost of travel. Top players can also earn salary through sponsorships, though they pale in comparison to the deals in tennis or golf: The average earnings for the Top 10 squash players in the world (men and women combined) was $183,784 in 2025, but for a Top 100 player, the average is closer to $50,000.

The presence of a grassroots community and the strength of the tour’s earnings share a reciprocal relationship. When there are fewer eyeballs on the product, sponsorships are harder to come by. Conversely, without sponsors and advertising, the sport is less visible to potential fans, who never come across it. “The biggest failure in the past 50-plus years of squash is that we cannot monetize it,” says Valdizan.

During the pandemic, Valdizan discovered that he wasn’t the first one to spot the void. Almost two decades ago, a now-defunct American squash league formed as a rival to the PSA. That was their first mistake, says Valdizan. Second, they weren’t looking to make changes to the gameplay for modern audiences. Valdizan, now 39, linked up with two professional players, Lovejoy and Tim Brownell (currently the top-ranked American in the world), who together joined him as co-founders of the NSL.

“To be honest with you, we thought we would fail,” says Valdizan. “We just wanted to do it our way, to do it the fun way, and to give back to squash.”

The NSL has yet to make a profit, though its founders believe that sponsorships could get them in the black soon. So far, the league has been mostly funded by its owners. In the first two years of the league, ownership groups paid $30,000 per season, money that went toward player salaries, travel, insurance, and other administrative costs. In return, owners received the naming rights to the team, along with any profits from ticket sales or local sponsorships to the events in their city.

“Our players, coaches and fans went wild. The hometown team winning the championship — what could be better?” — Tracey Specter

NSL matches are fast-paced and unlike anything in the existing squash landscape. Matches are timed, each one lasting only 70 minutes, with three periods up for grabs during that time (the winning team must capture two of them). One competitor from each side takes the court at a given time, but teams can substitute players in and out, creating more strategy around matchups and endurance. There are also “power plays” that teams deploy strategically to prevent their opponents from scoring.

The intent behind the rules changes is to create a familiar atmosphere that mimics some of the best aspects of other American team sports. “So if a little kid steps onto the court, they won’t feel like an outsider,” says Valdizan. “There are some people who want to hang on to its elitist reputation, who don’t want things to change, but the sport isn’t going to get better if we don’t make a change.”

When the NSL launched in 2023, its co-founders had no idea that squash would be named as an Olympic sport for the 2028 Los Angeles games. Now, they are hoping to build excitement leading up to the Olympics and to profit from that attention. Their next frontier is a probable westward expansion.

“We hope to have a West division by the time the Olympics come out, so that we can really promote the NSL alongside squash in the Olympics,” says Valdizan.

More squash for more people

The NSL has joined an ongoing movement to democratize the sport.

“Many squash facilities in the United States aren’t very accessible, because you have to pay a hefty membership fee,” says Lovejoy. “We need more public facilities where anyone can go and play — more community centers similar to the one we have here in Philadelphia.”

Lovejoy is referring to the Arlen Specter U.S. Squash Center on Drexel University’s campus, which, since opening in October 2021, has quickly become the epicenter of a new wave of enthusiasm for the sport. The Specter Center boasts the highest concentration of courts in the country: 22 in total, including two all-glass showcourts for pro events, inside a gleaming 80,000 square foot facility. No membership is required to play there, and discounts are available for anyone unable to afford the $15-per-hour fee.

Beyond its accessibility to the public, the Specter Center is home to a braintrust of thought leaders who are trying to usher in a more egalitarian future in the sport. Several organizations are headquartered at the facilities, including U.S. Squash, the official governing body for the sport nationally, and SquashSmarts, a renowned program for urban youth, both of which have been part of efforts to diversify the sport.

“There’s this idea of squash as an affluent game that only exists in country clubs,” says Stephen Gregg, the co-founder and executive director of SquashSmarts. “That’s a bit hackneyed. For several decades the game has gone well beyond its country-club reputation, in part thanks to people like Tracey [Specter].”

SquashSmarts, for example, has been training Philly public school students — providing them with meals, mentorship, and college readiness along the way — for decades, with a robust list of accomplishments to show for it. But the NSL could be an important next step in normalizing the sport, providing new opportunities for fans to interact with and enjoy the game, such as wearing a Philadelphia Lightning jersey or watching it at bars.

“A lot of the time, when players come into a city for a tour tournament, there’s not much of a requirement for them to engage with the community,” says Lovejoy. “So players will often play their matches, then leave. Whereas [in the NSL], we’re encouraging these players to get involved in the communities that they are playing for.”

Like the action on the court, the NSL schedule is fast-paced. Its third season kicks off in January with the NSL draft, where the pool of players, six to a team, gets distributed across league franchises (nine on the men’s side and six on the women’s at present). Regular season matches begin in April 2026 and culminate with the playoffs.

The Specter Center was chosen as the inaugural site of the NSL playoffs, in 2024, even though Philly did not have a team yet. Tracey Specter, who was in attendance for the playoffs, vowed to correct that — and to build on the city’s legacy within the sport. “Squash in the United States was first played in Philadelphia and that leadership continues now well over 100 years later,” says Specter.

Philly’s queen of squash

Quietly, Specter has contributed more to the game of squash than just about anyone. It’s also given her plenty in return, like watching her daughter compete in the collegiate ranks.

“I want to help elevate the profile of the sport,” says Specter, a life coach and philanthropist who lives on the Main Line. “It is great exercise, lots of fun, competitive, and a way to grow as a person – skills such as patience, sportsmanship, persistence.”

In 2024, Specter attended the inaugural playoffs for the NSL, which took place at the squash center named after her late father-in-law, the U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter. Before passing away in 2012, he was said to play nearly every day and reportedly traveled with a racquet in his luggage. Specter and her husband, Shanin, contributed the lead gift to erect the center but did not disclose the size of their donation.

Immediately after watching the playoff action, Specter — who described the experience as one of the most exciting in her lifetime of being around the sport — approached the organizers about expansion. While the players don’t necessarily live permanently in the cities whose names they wear on their jerseys, they are connected to their teams in other ways. For example, the Freedom’s owner, Sunil Desai, is the coach at Radnor High School, and has brought pros to train with the students.

It’s the sort of cross-pollination that only occurs when you have a critical mass of enthusiasts and organizations looking to grow the game under one roof. Philly is uniquely equipped to do that because of the forward-thinking vision of Specter and others, whether it’s building brand-new facilities or bringing a championship team to Philly.

Specter recalls the “full-body experience” of watching her team, the Philadelphia Lightning, raise the trophy in July, at the Specter Center. “When the final buzzer went off and we had won the match – I was literally jumping up and down with glee,” she recalls. “Our players, coaches and fans went wild. The hometown team winning the championship — what could be better?”

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