How to Grow a Squash Club

1. Where the squash players are

Squash's quiet advantage is that the demand already exists — vast numbers of people played at school, university or a leisure centre, drifted away when life got busy, and would happily come back if they had courts, opponents at their level and an easy way in. You're not creating a market; you're reconnecting with one.

• Local Facebook groups and community pages — town pages and "things to do in [town]" groups convert well. A photo of a busy court, a clear "club night Wednesday 7pm, £6, racquets and a beginner ball provided, all levels welcome", and you'll get replies the same evening.
• England Squash's club finder — affiliating gets your club listed (with the equivalents at Scottish Squash, Squash Wales and Ulster Squash), which catches the steady stream of people searching "squash near me" or "squash courts [town]". It's a slow drip, but it's warm, intentional traffic.
• Your venue's own enquiries and walk-up bookers — the leisure centre or racquets club you hire from fields constant "do you have a squash club?" questions and has a list of people who book courts solo. Ask staff to point both at you; a solo court-booker who can't find a regular opponent is your easiest convert.
• Cross-over sports and lapsed players — tennis, badminton and racketball/squash 57 players cross over readily, and ex-players from school and uni are everywhere. A noticeboard flyer at the gym, a post in a local running or five-a-side group, or a "bring a lapsed mate" night reaches exactly the people most likely to stick.
• Workplaces and universities — most have a sports noticeboard or Slack channel, and squash plays well as a sharp after-work hour. Pin a flyer or post a link.

2. Make joining frictionless

You will lose more interested players to a clunky sign-up than to anything on court. The classic squash on-ramp — email the club secretary, wait, get told to turn up and ask at the desk — leaks people at every step. Every extra hoop between "that looks fun" and "I'm on the roster" costs you members.

Replace it with a single tap. In ClubLono every club gets a join QR code and a public page (something like clublono.com/c/your-club). A player scans it, enters their name, and they're on the roster, in the box-league pool and able to see the next club night — no email chain, no paper form, no spreadsheet for you to update. Print the QR on your flyers, stick it on the wall by the courts, drop the link in every Facebook reply, and put it in your venue's reception folder.

3. Nail the first session

Squash punishes newcomers harder than most sports: a beginner against a regular can lose 11–0, 11–1, 11–2 having barely hit the ball, and they will not come back from that. A first-timer's experience is the single highest-leverage thing you control, so engineer it deliberately.

• Have a racquet and the right ball ready. Loan racquets by the courts and a red or blue-dot ball that actually bounces. Never start a beginner on a double-yellow — they'll conclude squash is impossible.
• Pair them with a patient regular, not your best player. Better still, have a friendly member do ten minutes of cooperative rallying — front wall, let it bounce, hit it back — before any scoring. The aim of session one is a few good rallies, not a result.
• Three rules, then play. Hit the front wall above the tin and below the out-line, one bounce is allowed, and give your opponent room to swing. Mention eyewear. Save the let-and-stroke nuances for week three.
• Make the introduction. Learn their name, introduce them to two other members, and tell them the next club night before they leave. People come back for the people as much as the sport.
• Follow up. A quick "great to have you Wednesday — same time next week?" in the club chat the next day converts triallists into regulars far better than silence.

4. Keep them coming back

Recruitment is wasted if people drift off after a month, and retention is far cheaper than chasing new faces. Two unglamorous things do most of the work: one communication channel, and a schedule people can rely on.

One communication channel

If club-night reminders live in a WhatsApp group, box-league results on a clipboard and the social plans in someone's camera-roll chat, members miss things and quietly fade. Pick one channel for everything. ClubLono includes a members-only club chat with photos and reactions — every player on the roster is automatically in it, and booked players get a thread for their specific session, so "court 2 double-booked, all on court 1 tonight" reaches the right people, not all 80 members at once.

A published schedule

"Same night every week" is the floor. Better is a published calendar showing the next 4–8 weeks, including the weeks you're not on because the courts are hosting a tournament or closed for resurfacing. ClubLono lets you publish a recurring session calendar with capacity limits per court, and members get a push notification when something new opens — so a regular always knows their game is on without having to ask.

5. Build a community people invite friends to

The clubs that grow fastest barely market at all — their members do it for them, because the club is somewhere they actually want to be. Word of mouth is the cheapest and best recruitment channel in squash, and it only fires when people feel they belong.

• Give the club an identity. A name, a logo, a club shirt people are happy to wear to the gym. It turns "the Wednesday squash thing" into "my club".
• Run socials. A post-session pint, a Christmas knockout with a daft trophy, an end-of-season box-league presentation night. Squash is intense and solitary on court — the social glue is what stops it being a transaction.
• Celebrate progress publicly. Post box-league promotions, a new member's first win, the longest rally of the night in the club chat. Recognition costs nothing and makes people feel seen.
• Make bringing a friend the norm. An occasional "bring a beginner" or "lapsed players welcome" night, with loan racquets ready, gives members an easy, low-pressure reason to recruit for you. Every regular knows three people who used to play.

6. Add competition once you have regulars

Once you've got a core of regulars who turn up most weeks, a competitive structure turns casual attendance into commitment. The trick is timing: add it when you have enough players to fill it, not on day one when an empty ladder just looks sad.

For squash, the box league is the proven club workhorse. Sort players into boxes of four or five by standard, give each box a month to play their round-robin matches, then promote the top one or two and relegate the bottom. It gives every member a reason to chase a game every single week and a tangible sense of climbing. A ladder (challenge the player a place or two above you) is an even lower-admin alternative that runs continuously. Either way, keep your casual club night as the welcoming front door — the competition should sit alongside it, never replace it, or you'll scare off the newcomers who are your future.

In ClubLono, the round-robin club night, queue and automatic scoring are free; box leagues, ladders and knockout brackets — with automatic standings and promotion/relegation — sit in the Premium tier, which is what you add once your club is ready to run a proper season.

7. Fund growth with fees and membership

Growth costs a little money — more court hours as numbers rise, loan racquets and balls for newcomers, the odd social or open day. The cleanest way to fund it is to let your fees and memberships do the work automatically, so the money's there when you need an extra court and you're never personally out of pocket.

The mechanics matter less than making them frictionless. Chasing court fees off sweaty players as they leave, or fronting the hire on your own card and reconciling it later, is exactly the admin that burns out the founder. Collect it automatically instead and reinvest the surplus into the things that actually grow the club: more courts, more loan kit, a real box-league season.

ClubLono is free for a single club with no time limit and no feature cliff. On paid sessions, the host receives the payment less Stripe's 1.5% + 20p and a 5% ClubLono platform fee. The Premium tier (£19.99/month or £199.99/year, with a 14-day free trial on either) drops that platform fee to 1% and unlocks multi-club hosting, leagues, kiosk mode, cross-club stats and DUPR export. ClubLono never holds members' funds — money goes straight to the host's bank account via Stripe, and cancelled paid sessions auto-refund every booked player. There is no per-player fee. In practice that means you can grow from one club night to a full league season without your costs scaling against you, and without ever turning fee collection into a second job.