Sam Epley describes the 21–by-32-foot regulation squash court as a primitive area, sometimes giving him a feeling of being trapped inside with another human being.
It is in that box of a room that Epley found a passion for the game that would lead him to a gold medal performance earlier this year at the Pan American Junior Championship.
The Greenwich teen fell in love with the sport at the age of 14 and admits he had to work doubly hard at his craft, having started later than most squash athletes.
“Since I started so late, I had to kind of play catch up,” Epley, now 18 years old, said. “I tried to spend as much time on the court as possible. I would be doing a lot of boring drills the other kids had been doing for years. I was practicing every single day for hours.
“People compare squash to playing chess at 150 miles per hour. It’s all about moving your opponent, putting pressure on them, and making them work hard.”
With the help of SportsPlex of Stamford and squash trainer Kumail Mehmood, Epley was chosen for the U.S. National Team, which competed in the Pan American games this past summer.
“Once I started working with Kumail, he really developed my game. He made me step up my fitness and had me do a lot of practice drills on the court. He really put the emphasis on intensity, so when I got on the court it changed everything.”
Mehmood, a former internationally ranked squash player, says that Sam was a raw athlete when he first met him, but has transformed into an elite juniors player.
“At first, mentally he wasn’t strong enough,” Mehmood said. “He was doing private sessions with me three times a week. Squash requires a lot of fitness, endurance, and speed as well. On-court, he would work on strategy and hitting the ball right. We worked on getting him a lot of confidence, and I was telling him that he could do it not just in practice matches, but in tournaments, too.”
Epley’s work ethic combined with rigorous training from Mehmood would result in him being named to a four-man team representing Team USA in Resistencia, Argentina.
Coming into the tournament as a 7/9 seed, Epley and his teammates were considered outsiders, since it was the first time the United States had qualified for the Pan American Junior Championships in over a decade.
After a loss to the top-ranked Mexico team in group play, Team USA earned victories over Chile, Guatemala and the host-country Argentina thanks to dominant play from Epley, Clark Doyle and Spencer Lovejoy.
A semifinal sweep of Guatemala would put Team USA in the finals against Mexico, setting up a rematch for the title.
Team USA put out their top three players in the championship and get out to a 1-0 lead after the first game.
Preparing for a potential third and decisive game, Epley recalls being outside and waiting to hear the status of his teammate’s performance in the second match.
“I was outside getting ready, and I thought I was coming on to clinch it for the team,” Epley said. “I came back inside, dripping in sweat with headphones on, and I saw my teammate Spencer make a comeback.”
The final match took an hour and nine minutes, as Epley’s teammate came back from a 2-1 deficit to win the match and the championship.
“We were ecstatic,” Epley said. “We went crazy. It was such a good experience because USA hadn’t been in the Pan Am games in over ten years. We were the first team to win the team gold medal.”
The added thrill of beating a team like Mexico, a dominant force in squash tournaments, according to Epley, made it that much sweeter for the underdog champions.
“As my last juniors event, it was the perfect way to cap it off.”
Epley now plays squash for the Dartmouth College and is preparing for his first season on the team.
Scrimmages start in mid-November and the freshman says that he’s now familiarizing himself with a new level of play.
“The freshman, including myself, are getting adapted to college squash,” Epley said. “We’re going to be playing adults, real athletes now. They can keep a rally. We’re really getting used to that.”
In Stamford Epley’s trainer, Kumail, gives private and semi-private squash lessons at SportsPlex and has experience in coaching from beginner to internationally ranked players. His program, called Finesse, Accuracy, Strength, Speed, Perception (FASSP), is considered one of the leading programs in the country.
Mehmood humbly acknowledged Sam’s vast improvement that led to a gold medal winning performance.
“For him to go from nobody at age 15 to being one of the top players under 18,” Mehmood said, “he obviously stepped it up. It took a lot of hard work from him and his coaches.”
