Squash in Pohang, South Korea by Martin Sadlon

I have been living in South Korea for almost ten months now, teaching English to children aged 5 through 13. The city I live in is called Pohang. It is a small steel-making city an hour north of Busan. Busan is a fairly large/famous city that many foreigners know. In Pohang, there are only three clubs that I am aware of. "OK Squash", where I first joined, had low ceilings, as in the picture below:

The third place, called Sunlin College, has two mini courts that are so small, I have had to stop playing due to all the laughter!! I can not stop laughing while I play, since the court is sooooo tiny, the ceiling sooooooo low, and even the width has been minimized, making squash a little dangerous, and very funny. Where I play now, "Pohang Squash", is the only club in the city that's part of the Korean Squash Federation, and seems on board and accurate with all things squash. Having 500,000, this makes squash very unique in the city. Regarding bigger cities like Busan and Seoul, I'm sure that both are boasting dozens of proper clubs.

This is a good link showing that there is at least one court in any major city. Pohang, my city, did not even make this list, illustrating my point about sometimes misleading or incomplete info.

Anyways, my club has at least one club league team, called 'Chowa Chowa Squash!' I would imagine, as there is no-one for them to play in our city, that they exist solely to travel and play groups from other nearby cities. Above that, there are of course the sponsored pros, who rank top five in my province, and who play competetively throughout Korea. I have not heard anything to indicate they travel abroad though. I do not know who is coaching them. I have never seen any other foreigners at the club, so imported professional coaching, unless in Seoul or Busan, is probably not happening.

As for myself, I have played the little tournaments they have to loosely rank players within the club, which are a blast, but lately have simply been spending time getting used to the new friends and new drills I have learnt from the new club. Despite my own efforts, I find myself always moving at the pace of Korea, meaning that sometimes I will play 3/4 court games for a week at a stretch, unable to find game partners. Just going with the flow, I guess!