When Team Greatist was asked to report to Pineapple Street this weekend for a game of squash, we knew this week’s Gractivity would be right up our fruit-and-vegetable-loving alley.
Thanks to our friend and pseudo- team member Nick from Happy Fun Corps (the lovely people that make this lovely website actually function!), Greatist got some pro tips to perfect our squashing skills. We met Nick and his Happy Fun Corp buddy Ben at Heights Casino in Brooklyn Heights for much of the Greatist team’s first exploration into squash (and any racquet sport for a few of us!). The racquet is slightly smaller and skinnier than a tennis racquet, and the ball is super tiny— about the size of a ping pong ball. Surprisingly, it barely bounces at all without the force of the racquet, making for some comical failed attempts at bouncing it on the ground only to realize it wasn’t coming back up to meet you! And while we spent a good amount of the 90-minute session making squash puns, Nick and Ben did manage to teach us a few real squash-playing tips: don’t run into the wall, don’t hit the ball into the ceiling, and try to keep your swinging racquet away from the group of people in the corner of the room. Not one, but all of these things came in handy as we swiftly moved around the small white room (not for the claustrophobes out there). We also of course took to coming up with our own moves, like the “Shakeshaft Shuffle” (thanks, Jordan!). Who’da thunk that locking yourself in a white room with glass doors and a tiny, fast-moving ball being slammed around would be so much fun?! See you on the squash court— and prepared to be SQUASHED! To find a place to play squash near you, check out the US Squash association’s club finder.
